Despite Heavy Clinton Overtones, DLC Leaders Embrace Obama

CHICAGO _ The Democratic Leadership Council’s hierarchy on Monday sought to reconcile divided presidential preferences with its core centrist-themed mission as it embraced Sen. Barack Obama as a candidate to further the group’s moderate agenda in the White House.

“I say to my friends who supported someone else, put it aside,” Harold Ford, a former Tennessee congressman who heads the group, said on the final day of its annual convention at a Chicago hotel. “Our reforms, the things that we stand for, are all embodied in our nominee.”

Obama did not appear before the gathering of an organization formed after Walter Mondale’s 49-state defeat in 1984. The DLC saw its influence grow significantly under President Clinton, a former chairman. Obama’s rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York, is part of the group’s leadership and Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, a Democrat-turned-independent who is backing Republican Sen. John McCain for the presidency, is a former DLC chairman.

The group’s previous support for welfare reform and fiscal responsibility, and its push for such issues as expanded trade and charter schools, has alienated more liberal elements within the Democratic Party which readily endorsed Obama’s candidacy.

But Obama has found himself under increasing criticism from the left in recent days for allegedly shifting positions on a variety of issues. They range from granting telephone companies immunity under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to a refusal to express his firm belief on the recent Supreme Court decision that overturned the Washington, D.C., handgun ban. The founder and CEO of the DLC, Al From, said he found comfort in the Illinois Democrat’s efforts to become “more practical” as a general election candidate.

“There’s a difference in a campaign that plays between the goal line and your own 20-yard line and one that plays the whole field,” From said, adding approval for Obama’s “transcendent message that says, ‘I want to get beyond the partisan polarization of Washington and I want to solve problems.’ “

Speaking to more than 300 elected officials, Ford warned members that regardless of internal differences, it was time to rally behind Obama.

“There might have been a little division here about whom we wanted for president, be it (New Mexico Gov. Bill) Richardson … (Delaware Sen. Joseph) Biden, (former North Carolina Sen. John) Edwards, Clinton or Obama. But one thing we can all agree upon, I hope and believe and pray, is that having a president whose name starts with M-c-C-a-i-n is something none of us want,” Ford said.

“Our reforms, the things that we stand for, are all embodied in our nominee, and if we’re committed to seeing him elected, what we enjoyed from 1992 to 2000 in prosperity and job creation and opportunity expansion around the globe, America’s values will return and we will return next year to our convention to talk about ways to work with the president to expand our agenda, to make America stronger,” he said.

Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley portrayed himself as an Obama surrogate at the event and defended the presumptive Democratic nominee’s absence Sunday, when the Illinois senator took a day off the campaign trail in Chicago.

“(Obama) needs some time with his family and I understand that more than anything else,” said Daley, who was credited by Ford with being someone who “has not allowed party affiliation or party challenge or pettiness to stand in the way of getting things done.”

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