The Making of the New Democrats

Bibliographic Data

ID4287975
AuthorsJon F Hale (corresponding author)
Year1995
Volume110
Issue2
Pages207-232
Publication date1995-06-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenuePolitical Science Quarterly (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0032-3195 • E-ISSN: 1538-165X
PublisherOxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/2152360
OpenAlexW2315810200
LanguageEN
Citations received32

In 1992, Democratic party was presented to Americans as Bill Clinton captured the party's nomination and won the presidency. Clinton's oft-made assertion that he was a different kind of was meant to suggest to voters centrist candidate more attuned than his immediate predecessors to the concerns and values of the white, middle-class voters who had deserted the party in its losing presidential campaigns in the 1980s. The prominent use of the phrases and a different kind of by the Clinton campaign gave clear indication of its perception that the preexisting identity of the national Democratic party was handicap that needed to be overcome for Bill Clinton to be elected president. Clinton did not want to be regarded as Democrat in the line of Michael Dukakis, Walter Mondale, Jimmy Carter, and George McGovern. The New Democrat rhetoric, however, was not simply campaign rhetoric concocted by Clinton's coterie of talented campaign strategists. It stood for substantively new Democratic approach to active government that had been developing since the early years of the Reagan administration. The story of the New Democrats is, in large part, the story of the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), an unofficial party organization of elected Democrats put together by political entrepreneur in 1985. The DLC's objective was to move the national Democratic party, in both perception and substance, toward the center of the political spectrum in order to break the Republican hold on the White House. Over time, the DLC gained the institutional capacity to draw prominent Democratic politicians into its sphere and to develop centrist alternative for the party. Had it not been for the institutional success of the DLC, the New Democratic message would not have been articulated and Bill Clinton would have been considerably less appealing and probably less successful candidate for president.I

Political economy · Political science · Sociology · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Electoral Systems and Political Participation · Political and Economic history of UK and US · Public Administration

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