The center folds; high noon for the new Democrats.

• Author: Kotkin, Joel

Barely two years after their greatest triumph--the election of Bill Clinton as president--the "New Democrats" find themselves outflanked by conservatives and liberals alike. On the right, Newt Gingrich's radicals have stolen much of their idea-driven reformist thunder; on the left, the increasingly dominant redistributionist wing of the Democratic Party has effectively isolated the New Democrats and their major organ of influence, the Democratic Leadership Council.

For the past decade, the New Democrats worked to construct a new paradigm in American politics. Focusing on the values of family, community, and responsibility, they built a home for Democrats tired of the anti-capitalist victim politics of the party's constituencies in academia, labor, and the minority community. To voters, they promised to reinvent government, streamline bureaucracy, and promote a socially tolerant, economically robust America. To elected officials, they promised a centrist-sounding strategy that could win national elections.

Today's sinking fortunes stem, first and foremost, from the fundamental betrayal of the New Democrat agenda by the very president whose ascendancy was thought to put the movement's ideas on the political fast track. By running as a New Democrat but governing as an old one, Bill Clinton, former chairman of the DLC, has left the movement defenseless against both intra-party boat-rockers and the swelling conservative tsunami.

The New Democrats' problems with Clinton began early in his presidency. Even as he directed the presidential transition, former DLC chairman Al From noted with horror: "I saw all around the people I thought we beat in the election." Although a handful of DLCers--notably Bill Galston and Elaine Kamarck--snagged relatively high positions in the administration, the balance of power remained firmly in the hands of Clinton's left-leaning intimates, especially Hillary Rodham Clinton, George Stephanopoulos, and Harold Ickes.

The result has been to place the DLC and the New Democrats in an untenable position. Tied by personal relationships and past associations to the president, they nevertheless have found themselves forced to oppose the administration both on tactics and long-term strategy.

The key split took place over health care. The decision to back the Hillary Clinton-Ira Magaziner perpetual-motion machine over all other alternatives and priorities (especially welfare reform) signaled the White House's traditionalist notions of how to build a national majority. Rather than reach out to taxpayers and families disgusted with the failures of the federal government, the administration, egged on by pollster Stanley Greenberg, instead tried to win the hearts and minds of the middle class by expanding the welfare state. This strategy meant hooking up with liberal Democrats in Congress rather than forging alliances with independents and moderates in the hinterlands beyond the Beltway.

That choice was a major mistake. By opting to play Washington insider rather than down-home outsider, Clinton essentially destroyed the credibility of the very people who joined him at the beginning of his 1992 campaign. This year, some of Clinton' s closest New Democrat allies, such as current DLC Chairman Dave McCurdy, found their own moderation no hedge against the anti-Clinton animus. McCurdy, who gave up his Oklahoma congressional seat to run for senator, got skunked after his opponent derided him as "McClinton."

"Bill Clinton has managed to decimate the very New Democrat foot soldiers who brought him to power," complained one embittered New Democrat strategist on the morning after the fall elections. "A lot of the hard-core New Democrats--the people with Clinton back in 1991--are now gone."

Clinton's betrayal leaves the New Democrats with little short-range hope of taking over--or even significantly influencing--the party. In the South, the historic base of the New Democrats, the 1994 elections were a barely mitigated bloodbath, with only a handful of moderate-to-conservative Democrats still in power after the ballot tallies. Except for its preeminence during the presidential primaries, the South has all but stopped serving as a serious center for Democratic politics.

Originally, the DLC grew...