It seems to me that what you are describing is a model of the Bill Clinton Presidencey. Mr. Clinton represented the goals and values of the Democratic party as well as 99% of his fellow Party members in the 1990's Yet he realized exactly what you are talking about--there is an enormous difference between pie-in-the-sky idealogy and pragmatic reality when it comes to getting things done in Washington.

Bill Clinton was willing to stand up against the criticism of his own party on issues he which he personally believed, such as the Free Market Trade Agreements and job outsourcing deals he signed in the NAFTA, GATT, and WTO agreements AGAINST the will his fellow Democrats who believed this would send millions of jobs overseas in the next two decades even though the net results would create on of the strongest financial markets in American history! Clinton aslo had the stamina to tackle Welfare Reform, continuing to support the truly needy while weeding out those who were unjustly sucking the government teat to the toon of nearly 350 billion dollars a year.

A great leader MUST oppose not only his political foes, but his own Party at times. More often than not, the political rhetoric of an election year is heady idealism, criticism, and thesedays--murderous, deephearted hatred. What we need in a GREAT Democratic President is one who will make a committment to the American people. One who will do what is pragmatic, what is doable, and one who will do what is for the good of the people over the good of the Party. Of course, every candidate has to tolerate the whack-job, tin-foil hatted conspiratorialists who talk about the Great Democratic or Republican Conspiracies. That Bush personally gave the signal to murder thousands at the WTC 0n 9/11 and destroy of those Federal Assets; or that Nancy Pelosi is a front for the Italian Mob, etc. But LET'S STICK TO THE FACTS AND VOTE FOR SOMEBODY WHO IS ELECTABLE and whose mide is rooted in the terrestrial, mot the extra-terrestrial.

Progressivism can’t afford to be based on anything other than the best available evidence.

If this is to be considered, we must remember that during the last 40 years of American elections. Republicans have held the White House for 28 of those years--that's exactly 70% of the time! Meanwhile, we Democrats have served 30% of the time! And the evidence is obvious to those who have followed politics for the last 40 years the only 2 Presidents that have won Presidential office were Carter and Clinton: both moderate, Baptists, from the South who are able to calm the people and not whip them up into a frenzy of vitriolic hatred and intolerance against our own fellow Americans! NO fringe, leftist progressive politician has ever won a Presidency and none will. Dream you pie-in-the-sky, ultra-left wingers, but it ain't happened and it ain't gonna happen! Thin realism, think WIN!

Scott said:

Finally, we need to appreciate that, as my mom always said, we can’t have it all.

Dan,

Since we all pretty much agree that we're not going to be nominating Kucinich, who are you talking about in the current Democratic field? Seems like to me that aside from Kucinich, there isn't a fringe candidate in the field.

thosethingswesay.blogspot.com

Guess I just don't know many of those types. I suspect their prominence is rather exagerated.

thosethingswesay.blogspot.com

Over the past few decades, I've never stopped calling myself a liberal (a word I chose over "progressive" precisely because of the campaign against it); but I've always considered myself a pragmatist, and distinguished between goals and means -- "eyes on the prize" is exactly the phrase I would use. That is indeed why I'd get frustrated by Congressional Democrats' seeming refusal to consider that any part of any policy might need to be reconsidered, a stance that gave the right undeserved ammunition which they used to discredit the whole progressive enterprise. And we're the ones who represent the "reality-based community" after all, so, like FDR, we need to be clear-eyed about what we're doing and whether or not it's achieving our intended aims.

But I've also long been frustrated, and worse, by the "centrist"/DLC types (even more vividly illustrated by Al From than Bill Clinton, perhaps) who became so fixated on what they decided was politically feasible that they were unable to see what might really be possible. Moreover, in their attempt to seem the sensible realists, too many of them (the ones given the most air time or op-ed space) chose to promote the right's worst, most dishonest characterisations of us, and helped the propagandists create an image of the whole Democratic party that bore next to no relation to reality -- an image that, thanks to their complicity, overwhelmed any attempt by Democrats, or anyone much left of center, to break through the public discourse. By any objective measure they in fact lost sight of those goals; by their words and actions they made it that much harder to achieve them. Their seeming "realism", which became more a combination of timidity and infatuation with the corporate types (and for some just plain self-aggrandizement), helped push the political spectrum to where it is today. Dan Tanna above says, "NO fringe, leftist progressive politician has ever won a Presidency and none will." He's wrong, of course; many of our best presidents were progressives (Lincoln, FDR, TR, just to name a few), and most of today's Democrats are arguing for policies solidly in that tradition. But by today's definitions, solidified in the public consciousness by the likes of Al From in the Wall Street Journal, that's "fringe." We're facing an opportunity to change that only because this Administration has been so catastrophic that they've created an opening for us; it certainly hasn't been thanks to the work of the "centrists."

Here’s HRC defending wars of aggression as a form of foreign assistance.

"Our troops did the job they were asked to do. They got rid of Saddam Hussein. They conducted the search for weapons of mass destruction. They gave the Iraqi people a chance for elections and to have a government. It is the Iraqis who have failed to take advantage of that opportunity."

Hillary Clinton, New Hampshire Democratic Presidential Candidates Debate 6/3/07

Arthur Silber has the rest:

http://powerofnarrative.blogspot.com/2007/06/some-races-are-just-not-as-good-as.html

Scott,

I hope you come back for a follow-up discussion some time soon. We're not finished here, I don't think.

The next discussion should be entirely about policy. You suggest that the New Dems aren't so far away from other progressives. I say that while most New Democrat policy ideas aren't highly offensive that they fall far short of the goals most of us would like to reach.

Let's by all means have another data debate, but about policy. I predict that while you will convince many that what Third Way wants isn't as far from what other progressives want as some think, but that you'll also see that the the chasm is wider than you've claimed.

thosethingswesay.blogspot.com

~

I see you and my grandmother would have gotten along famously . . .

This exactly describes our differences. You run from a starting point of "we can't have it all." We try to have it all, and, if needed, fall back to "we can't have it all."

Casting people who would like to see a democratic republic and a viable, economically strong middle class restored to this nation as leftist radicals is getting very tiresome. Further in light of the evidence of the slide away from a viable democracy and strong middle class capable of consuming the products of progress the argument is getting so damned transparent that a six grader can see through it.

I see a pack of sycophants looking for scraps from the upper crust’s table or want-to-be elitists as the authors of this disgusting propaganda. Such people have always been around but they once had the decency to stay in dark corners and the good sense not to expose themselves.

Personally I see New Democrats more politically dangerous than old Republicans. I like my pirates flying the Jolly Roger, rather than a friendly flag.

The world has achieved brilliance without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.

Gen. Omar Bradley

[duplicate deleted by author]

It seems to me that a post so concerned with fact-based policy would have more interest in whether, say, vouchers have been proven to work. (Hint: the less radical defunding of public education in charters thus far isn't looking great in studies.) Or what benefits thus far NAFTA has brought Mexico, and I say that as myself a liberal free trader in the Krugman mode.

It might also have more wariness of straw men; besides the one Mike raised, I don't recall liberals preferring Bush's deficit economy to taxes. I'd add more, but the conclusions are rather short of actual policy prescriptions. 

As for the post's capstone achievement, welfare reform, it doesn't sound all that marvellous to note that working people do well in an economy that is both prosperous and shrinks inequality, lousy in an economy that does neither, but that's allegedly why there are safety nets rather than an unfettered free market. The study cited also doesn't discuss the effect on families as a whole or on children and their education. So the benefits of the law are quite unclear. My mind is still open, but the pragmatic center has to work a bit harder to convince me it's also in the reality based community.  

John 

http://www.haberarts.com/