Sixteen years ago, Bill Clinton led his exiled party back to the White House by pointedly rejecting post-'60s liberalism and promised a "new brand of Democratic politics." But today, as the delegates convene here for their 2008 convention, the Democratic Party has shifted to an economic direction best described as "center left."
The fierce battles between New Democrat centrists and old-style liberals that defined the Democratic Party in the 1990s are long gone, with the party unified behind Barack Obama's economic agenda of universal health care, expensive federal programs and more regulation of the financial markets.
"The party is still proud of its fiscal direction in the Clinton years," says veteran campaign scholar Thomas E. Mann of the Brookings Institution. "Barack Obama feels obliged to pay lip service to it. But there is no sense that this is the highest priority."
At the 1992 convention, and again in 1996, party liberals bristled at the Clinton centrists' calls for a leaner government and a balanced budget, for "ending welfare as we know it" and putting more cops on the streets. The left was willing to back Clinton only because it meant victory. "America has shifted on us," New York Rep. Charles Rangel complained during the 1996 convention, just months after President Clinton declared the "era of big government is over." "Americans should be prepared to raise the taxes, invest in productivity, and create the jobs. But they can't support that. They'd rather cut taxes, invest in defense and build jails."
