Sen. Clinton Calls for Party Truce, United Front.

The Washington Post reports:

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) called Monday for a cease-fire among warring factions of the Democratic Party, arguing that a united front is needed to reverse the party's recent electoral defeats and halt the advance of conservative Republican ideology.

Clinton was the marquee attraction among a procession of prospective 2008 Democratic presidential candidates who spoke at the annual summer meeting of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) -- a group that was a springboard for Bill Clinton's first White House bid 13 years ago. She announced that she had taken a new position with the group aimed at winning back heartland voters.

All the prospective candidates emphasized that opposition to President Bush's policies alone will not put the Democrats back in the White House, but it was Clinton who forcefully argued that the Democrats no longer can afford internal strife and must bridge long-standing divisions to regain power.

"We Democrats have not yet succeeded in isolating and defeating the far right, in part because we have allowed ourselves to be split between left, right and center," she said. Noting that the DLC had often been in the forefront of those intraparty battles, she said all Democrats should agree to a truce and unite around shared values, "values violated every day in Washington by the ideologues of the Republican right."

Bill Clinton used his chairmanship of the DLC in the early 1990s to engage in some of those intraparty fights, urging a break from traditional liberalism and emphasizing "New Democrat" themes that foreshadowed his 1992 campaign. But in taking on a central role with the DLC, the New York senator suggested she would use her position less to create intellectual friction in the party than to serve as a voice around whom all Democrats can rally. "It is vital that we bring everyone's positive Democratic progressive ideas to the table," she said.

Although the next presidential campaign is three years away, Monday's session had clear overtones of that coming race. Three other Democrats actively considering running in 2008 -- Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack, the newly named DLC chairman; Sen. Evan Bayh (Ind.), the outgoing DLC chairman; and Virginia Gov. Mark R. Warner, who just concluded a year as chairman of the National Governors Association -- competed with Clinton for attention.

Attendees gave all four prospective candidates good reviews, but the mob scene that surrounded Clinton afterward showed she retains a special position within the party, one that for now seems to transcend the party's ideological camps.

In her speech, Clinton accused Republicans of reversing the course established by Democrats in the 1990s. "They turned our bridge to the 21st century into a tunnel back to the 19th century," she said. Then, with a time-machine metaphor, she offered an idealized vision of America in 2020 after other, presumably Democratic, policies had been put in place.

That America included a more protected homeland, a better-equipped and trained military, and diplomatic reengagement abroad as well as refocused attention on domestic problems such as health care, the budget deficit and strains on families.