Why Democrats Should Proceed to the Center With Caution

In the months ahead, Democrats will engage in a grueling process of soul-searching and finger-pointing. The party needs to reimagine its strategy if it hopes to regain control of the White House and cut into the significant gains that the GOP made throughout the electoral map.

There will be strong pressure for Democrats to veer more sharply toward the center on several key issues, including taxes, regulation, energy, and immigration. One of the historical examples that will be showcased as a model for moving to the middle will be the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), a small group of insiders who came together in 1985 to rebuild their party following the wreckage of President Ronald Reagan’s landslide victory against former Vice President Walter Mondale. While the DLC provides reason to believe that centrism can help pave a roadway back to the White House, which it did in 1992 and 1996, it also offers a warning of the potential long-term costs that centrism can pose to the health of a party.

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In 1985, Al From launched the DLC. He had previously served as executive director for the House Democratic Caucus from 1981 to 1985, which was chaired by Louisiana Rep. Gillis Long at the time. As Kenneth Baer recounts, their collaboration on the Committee on Party Effectiveness gave birth to the idea for the DLC. In 1982, they published “Rebuilding the Road to Opportunity,” a report that outlined the need to turn away from economic redistribution and toward economic growth and opportunity. From’s ambition was to revive the fading influence of moderate Democrats such as Long, who, in the 1960s and 1970s, had helped bridge the divide between Northern liberals and Southern conservatives. From was also inspired by the work of Washington Sen. Henry “Scoop” Jackson, who had broken with his party in the 1970s over foreign policy, believing that his colleagues had become too dovish after Vietnam.

From and Will Marshall, who was a speechwriter and analyst for Long, joined a group of distinguished Democrats in launching the project, including Missouri Rep. Richard Gephardt, Georgia Sen. Sam Nunn, and some governors, including Virginia Gov. Chuck Robb, and Arizona Gov. Bruce Babbitt. “We Democrats can’t continue to blame bad candidates, bad tactics, and bad luck,” Nunn warned. Several younger politicians were attracted by some of the ideas that From and Marshall were working on through this small organization. In 1988, the DLC was shattered when Vice President George H.W. Bush walloped Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis in the presidential election, after a blistering campaign that smeared the moderate technocratic governor as a far-left liberal by tapping into nationalistic patriotism and race-baiting. In 1989, Marshall established a think tank called the Progressive Policy Institute to advance DLC ideas and attempt to reframe the debate before the next presidential election.

At the heart of the DLC agenda was the imperative to shift toward the center. On domestic policy, this meant promoting market-based solutions to economic intervention, as well as reforms to the social safety net, to promote individual responsibility and work incentives. On foreign policy, the DLC called for more military intervention and support in targeted conflicts. The DLC came under intense political fire from liberal Democrats who warned that these arguments would erode the party’s best traditions, echoing Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy’s warning, which he made at the 1980 Democratic National Convention, against forgetting the fight for “the cause of the common man and the common woman.” Historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. wrote in the New York Times that “me-too Reaganism” would be disastrous. The DLC vision, Schlesinger argued, overstated the popularity of Reaganism and promoted wrong-headed policies. Moreover, he wrote, “If American voters are in a conservative mood, they will surely choose the real thing and not a Democratic imitation.”

But From and his colleagues felt that if Democrats did not shift dramatically, then the White House would remain in Republican hands for decades to come. From said the talking points from figures such as Schlesinger were “advanced by the standpatters in our party, who yearn for a return to the pre-Reagan status quo at home and advocate a neo-isolationism abroad.”

Of all the politicians who the DLC worked with, none was as important as Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton. When From and Clinton met in Little Rock in 1989, the DLC put an offer on the table that the governor could not refuse: “If you agree to become chairman of the DLC, we’ll pay for your travel around the country, we’ll work together on an agenda, and I think you’ll be president one day, and we’ll both be important.” Clinton served as the DLC chairman from 1990 to 1991. From followed through on his promise to help elevate Clinton. The DLC established chapters in numerous states and launched a national convention, branding itself as the “mainstream voice of the Democratic Party.” During his campaign in 1992 against Bush, Clinton reminded voters and the media of his reputation as a New Democrat with great pride. The DLC helped Clinton raise money, round up endorsements, and knock off primary challengers. The governor chose Tennessee Sen. Al Gore as his running mate, resulting in two young southerners at the top of the ticket who shared an affinity for the centrist vision. The party platform included text about a “new covenant to repair the damaged bond between the American people and their government, that will expand opportunity, insist upon greater individual responsibility in return, restore community, and insure national security.”

To be sure, Clinton didn’t totally jettison older Democratic ideals. His relationship to the DLC, as historians Judith Stein and Nelson Lichtenstein argued in their 2023 book on Clinton’s presidency, was “far more ambiguous.” Clinton simultaneously returned to core Democratic arguments about the role of government in the economy and stressed his commitment to working families. Nonetheless, the influence of the DLC loomed large as Clinton attempted to position himself as a Democrat who mainstream voters could accept in a more conservative era. The plan worked. Clinton won the presidency, and he would be reelected four years later over Kansas Sen. Bob Dole, a Republican.

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As tempting as this historical model might be, Democrats will do well to understand the costs that were also a result of the strategy—costs that Democrats are still paying today in painful ways. One of the signature decisions in the first year of Clinton’s presidency was to sign the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The agreement, which opened the flow of commerce between the United States, Canada, and Mexico, had been worked on by Bush before the end of his term. Clinton, who saw NAFTA as a way to brandish his New Democrat bonafides, stressed that free trade was an inevitable reality and that it would lift all boats.

Not everyone agreed. During the 1996 presidential campaign, third-party candidate Ross Perot, who received over 19 million votes, said the “giant sucking sound” U.S. workers heard was well-paying jobs being moved abroad. Many liberals and progressives joined Perot in his critique as Congress considered what to do. In 1993, Vermont Rep. Bernie Sanders, an independent, said, “NAFTA may be a good deal for the people who own our corporations, but it is a bad deal for American workers, for our family farmers, and it is bad for the environment.” Gephardt, who was also House majority leader at the time, led a campaign against the bill, as did Michigan Rep. David Bonior, House majority whip.

Clinton pushed back, sending his vice president, Gore, to appear on CNN’s “Larry King Live” in a televised debate against Perot in November. Gore won. The House and Senate passed the NAFTA within a few weeks. The new Democratic vision was triumphant. In his signing statement, Clinton proclaimed, “We cannot stop global change. We cannot repeal the international economic competition that is everywhere. We can only harness the energy to our benefit. Now we must recognize that the only way for a wealthy nation to grow richer is to export, to simply find new customers for the products and services it makes.”

By 2000, the U.S. economy was roaring, and the emergence of a vibrant high-tech sector seemed to promise a new era of economic growth. The fact that Clinton ended his time in power with low unemployment, minimal inflation, and federal surpluses seemed reason to cheer.

Looking back, however, it has become clear that many working families suffered greatly as a result of NAFTA. The middle way didn’t provide economic hope or security. It was part of a switch to what some historians, such as Gary Gerstle, have called the “neo-liberal order” that privileged unfettered markets regardless of the impact on average Americans. “Deindustrialization has diminished the wealth, power and health of working-class Americans arguably more than any other single culprit,” Dan Kaufmann recently wrote in the New York Times. “The passage of NAFTA remains one of the most consequential events in recent American political and economic history.” While deindustrialization was well underway by the 1970s, the historic trade agreement greatly accelerated these destructive processes.

Now, a reimagined Republican Party rests on a foundation of working-class voters. And this year they were joined by working Latino and Black voters, who are likewise feeling the squeeze of long-term economic security. Along with other Republicans, they have forged a governing coalition that keeps growing and has thrown the Democrats into disarray. Surveying the results from last week, journalist Ezra Klein said on his show that the “Obama coalition is over. It is defeated and exhausted. What comes next needs to be new.”

For all its political benefits, the history of the DLC reveals two fundamental problems that centrist politics can create. First, it can result in a party leaving behind traditions that remained at the heart of its appeal to most supporters. Second, they can dissuade parties from the hard work of really reimagining their ideas and constituencies in bold ways that are usually essential to realignments.

With an eye on 2028, Democrats must watch for policy decisions that could help them at the electoral level in the near future but harm their long-term potential to create a new governing coalition to supplant the one Obama built.