Who Would Wellstone Quote? -

Who Would Wellstone Quote? - As part of the Nine Dwarves' race to the left for the nomination, the Wellstone name and legacy are getting invoked all over the place.

Is this a good thing for the Dems?:

"Larry Sabato, a political scientist at the University of Virginia, said that the Democratic hopefuls are engaged in smart politics.

'Wellstone was on the far left of the Senate, but his philosophy is actually precisely where most of the activists in the Democratic Party are,' he said. 'How better to appeal to the actual Democratic electorate than to invoke the name of one of their secular saints?'

David Wellstone, the senator's eldest son, said the candidates 'understand that people loved the fire and the passion and the integrity that my dad brought to the job. And that was all focused on improving people's lives, and that's why they're mentioning him.'

Had Wellstone lived, his son said, he would have been under great pressure to enter the 2004 race."

No doubt he would have been.

And this is the part I love:

"What activists like Dean call the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party is an aberration: the McGovern-Mondale wing, defined principally by weakness abroad and elitist interest-group liberalism at home," Al From and Bruce Reed wrote in a memo distributed by the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC). From is founder of the centrist DLC, and Reed is its president.

That annoyed progressives, including Kelly Young, executive director of the Washington-based 21st Century Democrats.

"To claim that the activists of the party are liberal elites is absurd. . . . We're the party of the people," she said.

Insert comment implying eye-rolling disgust here.

Young said that many party activists are frustrated that the Democratic Party has not backed "bold progressive policies." They are actively working for progressives in the 2004 election, she said, and Democratic candidates are taking note.

"They recognize that the strength and the power right now is in the progressive movement, and that is what Senator Wellstone embodied," Young said.

Sabato noted that invoking Wellstone's name could be risky for Democratic candidates.

"The further they go to the left, the less chance they have of beating Bush," he said.

He predicted that once Democrats settle on a nominee and focus on the general election, there will be far less talk of Wellstone.

"It's those suburban voters and centrist voters that Democrats have to win. . . . They're not Wellstone voters," he said.

The invocations of Wellstone mean exactly what the election of Wellstone meant, 13 years ago; a sign of how far to the left the main DFL base is. In the Minnesota of 1990, that wasn't a drag. In the US of 2003, it is.

Posted by Mitch at July 28, 2003 03:51 AM