‘Meet the Press’ transcript for Aug. 12, 2007

MR. DAVID GREGORY:  Our issues this Sunday:  the future of the Democratic Party.  On a week when the Democratic presidential field courted key elements of the liberal base, there is an intensifying debate within the party about the strategy for success in ‘08.  Liberal vs. centrist—whose voice will dominate on issues like the war in Iraq, terrorism, health care, trade and more?  With us, representing the centrists, the chairman of the Democratic Leadership Council and former Tennessee Congressman Harold Ford Jr., and for the liberal wing, one of the most outspoken and influential voices in the blogosphere, founder and publisher of the Daily Kos Web site Markos Moulitsas.

Then in our political roundtable, the Republicans.  Mitt Romney wins yesterday’s Republican Iowa straw poll.  But will it matter given the other leading contenders didn’t participate?  And save the date, but which one?  The 2008 presidential primary calendar could actually start in 2007.  Who benefits from the changing political calendar?  Insights and analysis from Bloomberg news columnist and Washington editor of The Week magazine Margaret Carlson, assistant managing editor of Time magazine Michael Duffy, NBC News political director Chuck Todd, and National Review’s White House correspondent Byron York.

But first, the debate within the Democratic Party.  We are joined now by former Congressman Harold Ford of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council and Markos Moulitsas, the founder and publisher of the Daily Kos Web site.

Welcome, both of you.  This has been a debate you’ve been having all week in print and online.  The first time you two have been together to talk these issues through.  And let’s get right into it.

Congressman Ford, you issued a kind of warning this week when you took this issue on, writing about it in The Washington Post.  We’ll put it on our screen for our viewers to see.  You wrote the following:  “With President Bush and the Republican Party on the rocks, many Democrats think the 2008 election will be, to borrow a favorite GOP phrase, a cakewalk.  Some liberals are so confident about Democratic prospects that they contend the centrism that vaulted Democrats to victory in the 1990s no longer matters.

“Some on the left would love to pretend that groups such as the Democratic Leadership Council, the party’s leading centrist voice, aren’t needed anymore.

“But for Democrats, taking the center for granted next year would be a greater mistake than ever before.  George W. Bush is handing us Democrats our Hoover moment.  Independents, swing voters and even some Republicans who haven’t voted our way in more than a decade are willing to hear us out.” Don’t abandon the center.

FMR. REP. HAROLD FORD JR. (D-TN):  For us to win and do well, it will take a merging of both factions, every part of the party.  Let me first congratulate Markos, not only on what he’s done to give voice and give rise to a series of not only grievances but a series of ideas from all members of our party.  In a lot of ways, the rise of talk radio in the last several years, the last decade or so, has left Democrats wanting to be heard and left Democrats wanting to organize a message.  He deserves applause not only for mobilizing and intensifying support for things that we care about, and I dare say many members in the mainstream political spectrum care deeply about.  The DLC deserves some credit for that.  I’d probably say the MVP, though, in the whole thing has been George Bush, the Republican Congress, and the mismanagement of this war and so many other missteps they have made that have worked to not only bring Democrats together, but it’s worked to even give Democrats a fair hearing amongst a broader cross section of America.

MR. GREGORY:  But your purpose...

REP. FORD:  The purpose...

MR. GREGORY:  Yes.

REP. FORD:  The purpose of this piece is to say let us not get caught up in taking credit, too much credit.  Let us not get caught up in, in, in, in, in claiming that we are or they are or another group is more responsible.  What we should be serious about, I think, is merging factions, organizing our platform around a clear energy...

MR. GREGORY:  But, Congressman, you’re issuing more of a warning, saying, ‘Don’t lurch to the left.’

REP. FORD:  Well, that, that, that is.  And the reality is, in national elections, I believe to win you have to cross three hurdles.  First, you have to demonstrate your strength and trustworthiness on national security.  You have to demonstrate that your values are squarely in the mainstream of America.  And, three, you have to demonstrate as a Democrat that you can be trusted on taxes, economic and fiscal policy.  If we do those things, I believe we better improve our chances of winning.  If we don’t, I think we run the risk of being so excited and enthusiastic that we miss an opportunity, an historic moment, to not only build a majority but to gain a chance to govern. What we’re really asking the American people to do in 2008 is to trust us, to invest in us with the power to govern and lead this country.

MR. GREGORY:  A rebuttal from Markos this week where else but on the Daily Kos Web site.  And you wrote the following:  “The DLC,” Democratic Leadership Council, “doesn’t want a victorious Democratic Party unless such victories happen using their formula.  We’ve been there, done that, and it simply didn’t work.  We as a movement,” meaning the Net roots movement, “sprung from those failures.  We helped build this majority,” the majority in Congress.  “Not the DLC’s 350 or so members.  This is not longer their party.  And as such, we can look forward to finally being truly competitive for years to come.”

Markos, when you say that their approach simply didn’t work, what didn’t work?

MR. MARKOS MOULITSAS:  Well, we’ve had 20 years of Democrats arguing that we can’t show passion, that we can’t really stand strong for being Democrats, that we must blur the distinctions.  There’s been a line of argument that the DLC’s been pushing for many, many years that this is a conservative country, and as such, if we force people to choose between Democrats and Republicans, we’re going to lose these elections.  And, and for many years this was sort of the conventional wisdom in Washington, D.C., and in the consulting class here in, in, in the Democratic Party.  So what we did, though, in, in 2002, we started organizing.  We looked at, essentially, what was a track record of failure for the Democratic Party.  The Republicans were in ascendancy.  They had the trifecta in government.  And we said, “You know what?  Things aren’t working.  We need a new approach.” And what we did is we started organizing. We started pushing Democrats to be proud to be Democrats.  This had nothing to do with being centrist or liberal or conservative.  It had to do with standing tall for core progressive principles.  In fact, one of the first people we, we supported was Stephanie Herseth in South Dakota, who is now a Blue Dog.  Ben Chandler in, in, in Kentucky.  So we, we work with, with politicians that really fit the people in their states and in their districts, and help them sort of get over this hump...

MR. GREGORY:  But you call yourself a liberal partisan.

MR. MOULITSAS:  Oh, I’m very much a partisan, absolutely.  But, you know, one of my first allies...

MR. GREGORY:  Who represents the liberal wing of the party.

MR. MOULITSAS:  Not necessarily.  What we’re doing...

MR. GREGORY:  But you call yourself a liberal partisan.

MR. MOULITSAS:  Because—you’re, you’re trying to make it about me, and here’s the difference is that this isn’t about me.  I run a site and I’m part of a movement that has hundreds of thousands to millions of committed activists working on behalf of their candidates.  Now, if they’re in Kentucky, they’re going to be working for Ben Chandler, because that’s who they have.

MR. GREGORY:  Mm-hmm.

MR. MOULITSAS:  So it doesn’t matter who I think is liberal enough or conservative enough.  I don’t make those value judgments.  I don’t—I’m not there—arrogant to think that I should be making those decisions.

MR. GREGORY:  For, for both, for both of you, if you could advise the party’s nominee to say top three issues, and these are what your positions should be, what would they be?

MR. MOULITSAS:  Well, you know, you’re starting talking about issues.  What I want that candidate to do is to not be afraid to talk about who they are, to be authentic and to tell us who they are so that we can actually make a decision.  And not me.  I’m not going to make this decision.  It’s not my job to decide who the nominee’s going to be.  I want these candidates to speak to regular Americans.  And for too long they’ve been speaking to the pundits, they’ve been speaking to shows like this one.  They haven’t been really communicating to the base because they had to go through this media filter and this political filter, and now we’re destroying those filters.  We’re saying go straight to the people, talk to them, make your case.

MR. GREGORY:  Congressman...

REP. FORD:  (Unintelligible)...one...

MR. GREGORY:  ...top, top three...

REP. FORD:  I hope we can merge all the factions in our party to organize around a clean energy future, developing not only a plan to win and improve our chances of, of instilling stability in the Middle East, but to find ways to, to attract and—new energy, and for lack of a better word, and new investments to find new energy sources for the future.  Two, to fight the growing inequality.  I give, I give them credit also for highlighting and bringing attention to the fact that there’s a growing gap between people who have and people who don’t and, more importantly, people who want.  And the Democratic Party’s longtime tradition has been to address those issues.  And finally, we’ve got to find ways to address the health care and education challenge in this country.  The next president of the United States, he or she will have the challenge of uniting the country around a common agenda and then working his or her heart out, not only to build support here, but to hap—to help re-establish a marker about this great country around the globe.

MR. GREGORY:  For...

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