Paint a "Duh" across the heads of those going the McGovern route. It's not going to win the more conservative Democrats and the moderate Republicans. All it will do is allow Karl Rove and Bush to laugh like drunken rednecks during another four years of raping the nation.


Centrist Democrats Warn Party Not to Present Itself as 'Far Left'
By ADAM NAGOURNEY


PHILADELPHIA, July 28 — The moderate Democratic group that helped elect Bill Clinton to the White House in 1992 warned today that Democrats were headed for defeat if they presented themselves as an angry "far left" party fighting tax cuts and opposing the war in Iraq.

The warning, by the Democratic Leadership Council, an organization of moderate Democrats that helped move the party to the center 10 years ago, was largely a response to the popularity enjoyed in early presidential primary states by Howard Dean, the former governor of Vermont.

Dr. Dean has attracted wide notice for his criticism of the Democratic Party for supporting the Iraq war and some of President Bush's tax cuts.

Neither Dr. Dean nor any other presidential candidate attended the two-day conference of the leadership council, which ended today.

But the group's leaders said their concerns went beyond Dr. Dean and reflected what they feared was an emerging perception of the entire Democratic presidential field as supportive of liberal policies that the council rejected long ago.

"It is our belief that the Democratic Party has an important choice to make: Do we want to vent or do we want to govern?" said Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana, chairman of the organization. "The administration is being run by the far right. The Democratic Party is in danger of being taken over by the far left."

When a reporter asked a panel of council leaders whether Democratic woes were a result of Republican attacks or Democratic mistakes, Senator Bayh responded with a curt two-word answer that silenced the room.

"Assisted suicide," he said.

Al From, the founder of the organization and an ally of Mr. Clinton, invoked the sweeping defeats of George McGovern in 1972 and Walter F. Mondale in 1984 as he cautioned against a return to policies — including less emphasis on foreign policy and an inclination toward expanding the size of government — that he said were a recipe for another electoral disaster.

"There are some in our party who would take us back to our pre-Clinton days, who refuse to learn the lessons of President Clinton's success," Mr. From, the group's chief executive, said after being introduced as "the man who led our party out of the wilderness once before."...





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