New Democrats would not be wrong to view this year's Democratic national convention as their own victory rally. Though the party platform offered brave words to comfort liberals, the details were safely moderate. Running mate Joe Lieberman, president of the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), is about as centrist a figure as the Democratic Party has outside the deep South. A New Republic cover exulted, "How the Democrats Buried the Left," citing Lieberman, Congressman Dick Gephardt's rapprochement with Gore, the relative isolation of labor, and the New Democrat themes that dominate Gore's campaign.

What a wonderful world it seemed in the 1990s. The
United States had not only won the Cold War; it had demonstrated the economic,
political, and moral superiority of its own system, the free market. Those abroad
who had long resented U.S. global policies were finally revealed to be
self-defeating nationalists or superannuated Marxists. Even the Latin Americans
were scrambling to catch the laissez-faire wave, firing their planners, hiring
Chicago-trained economists, slashing antiquated welfare outlays, privatizing
state enterprises, and, above all, opening themselves to foreign private capital.