Crashing the Party

David Sigal's documentary celebrates both the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) and Al From, the former Carter administration staffer who founded the organization in 1985 to move the Democratic Party in a more moderate direction after its miserable showings in the presidential elections of 1980 and 1984. The DLC was considered an insurgent group within the party, challenging liberal orthodoxy to fashion a broader base of support. Crashing the Party portrays the DLC as having paved the way for Bill Clinton—an early member as governor of Arkansas, and DLC chair in 1990-91—to win the presidency in 1992 as a “New Democrat.” Sigal combines archival footage with interviews of From, Clinton, Jesse Jackson, Sam Nunn, Chuck Robb, Dick Gephardt, and others to detail how the DLC attracted support, especially from Southern state officials, while antagonizing groups that had long dominated the party. The documentary concentrates on the years after 1988, when the defeat of Michael Dukakis by George H.W. Bush demonstrated to many in the party that its platform needed to be massaged in order to appeal to more voters, and it concludes with an account of the 1992 campaign emphasizing how candidate Clinton staked out positions that succeeded in deflecting the type of assaults from a well-tooled Republican attack machine that had been effective in previous election cycles. Crashing the Party is by no means objective: the film depicts the members of the DLC as heroes who struggled against entrenched power brokers to lead their party out of the wilderness of defeat to attain electoral triumph. But whether or not one agrees with the DLC's policies, the film skillfully sketches the DLC's success. Recommended. [Note: this is also available from Tugg (http://licenses.tugg.com) with public performance rights on DVD or Blu-ray for $75: public libraries; $350: colleges & universities.] Aud: C, P. (F. Swietek)