Lessons of November.

• Author: Reed, Adolph, Jr.
• Position: November, 1994 Republican election sweep and liberals - Column

The architects of the Democratic Leadership Council finally got unfettered control of the Party and their chance to govern. Well, they tested it on November 8, and here we are.

Doug Henwood of the Left Business Observer characterized the DLC's bizarre notion of tough-minded pragmatism, as embodied in President Piggly Wiggly, most succinctly: "Alternate weakly progressive rhetoric with weakly reactionary rhetoric - the don't-ask-don't-tell idiocy on same-sexers in the military on the one hand, the revolting Quayle-like family values crap on the other - and do little of substance. And then wonder why you lose elections." This approach is breathtakingly illogical on its face. For all their smug claims to realism, its proponents are apparently impervious to the lessons of their own experience.

Their commitment to a politics without conviction is almost cultish: Success or failure equally confirms their faith. After losing both houses of Congress, they drew the amazing lesson that they need to move further to the right. That is, they need to do more of what precipitated defeat in the first place.

Ironically, the party's Left - centered in black voters - helped pave the way for the DLC back in 1988 by checking out of the electorate, opting instead to tilt at windmills with a Jesse Jackson who could never win the nomination. It was much easier than it should have been for the Party's eventual nominee to avoid taking a firm and aggressive stand on an egalitarian agenda; he could instead just wait and cut a personal deal with Jackson after the fact.

Likewise, almost everything the Clinton Administration has done since getting elected reflects its rejection of the Democratic Party's egalitarian wing. Consider, on the one hand, its half-hearted support of an inadequate economic-stimulus package, its contemptuous out-of-hand dismissal of single-payer health-care proposals as politically unfeasible (unlike the still-born albatross they ultimately produced), offering Lani Guinier as a sacrifice to Orrin Hatch and company without a fight and dissing her scholarship in the process. For those who might see the problem as simple spinelessness, consider, on the other hand, what the Administration has dug in its heels to fight for - NAFTA, GATT, the horribly racist and draconian crime bill, and its equally racist and draconi welfare-reform package.

Since November 8 this pattern has only gotten worse. Right after the elections Piggly Wiggly hyped his hideous welfare-reform plan by noting that it has many of the features of the Republicans' vile plan. Next he came out, all on his own, for prayer in the schools, and then, to put our money where his mouth is, he announced a $25 billion windfall to the Pentagon's budget. And he's proposed eliminating public housing for the poor, privatizing the air-traffic control system, and making the Federal Housing Administration (the main public-housing program for the nonpoor) operate like a private firm. To ice the cake of conciliation, Hillary announced that she thinks abortion is the wrong choice.

The DLC crowd's problem isn't myopia or opportunism, though there is no shortage of sheer opportunists in its ranks. They're operating in a way that's consistent with a larger agenda, which is to purify the Democratic Party by...