Misunderstanding Anne Wexler (and the Democratic Party)

In his mini-profile of the late Anne Wexler, Matt Bai traces her arc from idealistic antiwar activist to wealthy Washington insider, suggesting that she was a member of a corrupt Democratic establishment little different from the bosses and brahmins of old:

Wexler’s career was, in fact, the story of a generation. The young idealists of both the McGovernite left and the Goldwater right had arrived in Washington vowing to reform it, but by the time Anne Wexler died, they had become, instead, their own kind of establishment — a ruling class of consultants and lobbyists and celebrity pundits every bit as immovable as the machine bosses and Brahmin lawyers of another era. As Wexler herself might have pointed out, she didn’t do anything her male contemporaries hadn’t done. She was simply better at it.

Bai’s plaint against the Democratic establishment and the ’68ers will be familiar to anyone who has read Rick Perlstein, Matt Taibbi, and the Daily Kos. By their lights, the Democratic Party hasn’t changed much in 40 years; it’s still a party that caters too much to the center instead of the progressive left, whether it’s Obama’s economic plan or the party establishment’s initial support for the Iraq War.

What’s missing from this criticism is any historical context. Anne Wexler did more than help reform the Democratic Party. She helped revolutionize it. Instead of throwing rocks at the police or storming Grant Park, she was inside the Chicago convention changing the party’s presidential nomination rules. Sure, the post-1968 Democratic Party does not fulfill the deepest yearnings of the progressive left, but it has shifted to the left on foreign policy as well as cultural and social issues.

When Anne Wexler was starting out in party politics in the ‘60s, the White House and national party leaders opposed removing any of our half a million boys from Vietnam, did not even stop to consider repeal of the nation’s abortion laws, and sought to be tough on crime. Moving the Democratic Party to the left on foreign policy and social issues was central to Wexler’s plan, as well as that of her largely unknown band of reformers. “If you wanted to end the war,” she told me of her efforts in 1968, “you had to change the [party] leadership. So we came up with a way to pick our own delegates.” Don’t take just my word for it, however. Read David Mixner, a well-known gay activist and ally of Wexler’s, or Ted Van Dyk, a key lieutenant to Hubert Humphrey and George McGovern. This trailer for last year’s “Chicago 10″ also gives the feel of this era:

After she and her band of revolutionary reformers were done in the ‘70s, the party leadership wanted an end to the Cold War, supported abortion repeal (now called abortion rights), and favored criminal rights. Although some Democratic leaders today have moved to the center on these issues, many have not.

I am not saying that the Democratic Party is liberal or progressive on all issues. Its health-care reform plan, for example, is probably closer to the middle of the road than anything Republicans have proposed. In fact, it has moved to the right on economic issues. But it is a party that is far more upscale and secular than it was two generations ago. Ignoring the party’s shift, from the party of Mayor Daley and Bobby Kennedy to the party of Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, isn’t historical or responsible.