A political dinosaur goes extinct

The Democratic Leadership Council, the iconic centrist organization of the Clinton years, is out of money and could close its doors as soon as next week, a person familiar with the plans said Monday.

The DLC, a network of Democratic elected officials and policy intellectuals had long been fading from its mid-'90s political relevance, tarred by the left as a symbol of "triangulation" at a moment when there's little appetite for intra-party warfare on the center-right. The group tried -- but has failed -- to remake itself in the summer of 2009, when its founder, Al From, stepped down as president. Its new leader, former Clinton aide Bruce Reed, sought to remake the group as a think tank, and the DLC split from its associated think tank, the Progressive Policy Institute.

But Reed left the DLC last year himself to serve as Vice President Joe Biden's chief of staff, leaving Ed Gresser, a trade expert, to lead the group in the interim. Since then the board "hasn't been able to find someone who wanted to come on in a permanent capacity," a person familiar with the group's woes said, with the central problem the difficulty of raising money for a Democratic group that isn't seen as an ally of the White House.

"With its CEO Bruce Reed joining the Administration, the DLC Board of Directors has decided to suspend operations while it considers what the next phase of the DLC will be," From said in an emailed statement. "The issues the DLC has championed continue to be vital to our country and the DLC will continue to impact them in its next phase. The Democratic Leadership Council has had an historic impact on American politics over the past 25 years. We're convinced that it will continue to have that impact in the future."

There is no "Third Way" - at least as it was envisioned by the DLC. There are probably "10 Ways" to approach governance, but the DLC wasn't necessarily concerned with that. Their primary purpose was to graft conservative rhetoric onto liberal policies to make them sound more appetizing to the electorate.

If "centrist" means neither liberal nor conservative, the DLC failed in that mission spectacularly. Government activism is government activism no matter how hard you try to hide it. Their dishonesty helped elect one president and almost got another into office.

The real significance of the death of the DLC is that the Democratic party is now not even pretending to be mainstream. They are a lockstep far left liberal party that will punish apostasy and promote radical statist solutions to our problems.