the main vehicle for the rejuvenation of the Democratic Party. The CPE has been called "the first organizational embodiment of the New Democrats."

The DLC started as a group of forty-three elected officials and two staffers, Al From and Will Marshall, and shared their predecessor's goal of reclaiming the Democratic Party from the left's influence prevalent since the late 1960s. Their original focus was to secure the 1988 presidential nomination of a southern conservative Democrat