It is no accident that Clinton was the first Democrat to be elected and re-elected in six decades," said Al From, founder and CEO of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council. "Dean shown he has been able to energize the base, but that's not the only thing you need to do. The liberal base is important to our party. You also have to be able to reach out to the swing voters who are also important to our party and you have to have to win ...When we've had the most 'pure' candidates we've had some of the biggest defeats."
From also argued that money is only one measure of how a candidate is doing. "If money was all that mattered, we would have had president John Connolly and president Phil Gramm," he said.
Great. Nice way to reinforce that bickering problem we're (deservedly) accused of having. More ammo to use against us in 2004. This is "Leadership"? More of From's wussiness can be found here.
From is still smarting from his rabid criticism of his Dean being "too far to the left" comments some weeks back. It's always wise to throw labels on people without fully researching what they're about. He seems intent on comparing Dean to George McGovern. WTF? If the DLC thinks Dean is a flyweight like McGovern was, then they should start visualizing how "centrists" Joe Lieberman or Dick Gephardt or (shudder) Joe Biden will look when they have to debate Bush. Then, and only then, will they wake up and realize Dean's strengths.
And they're not all that left-wing wacky. They're downright Democratic.
