I just completed a face-to-face interview with Ed Rendell, Governor of Pennsylvania and former chair of the Democratic National Committee. He was cordial, serious but friendly, and here are some highlights (typed verbatim from my recording of our conversation):

Me: Looking down the road 10 or 15 years, how do you expect the [Democratic] party will change or will need to change in order to continue to broaden it’s appeal?

ER: I actually think the most important movement historically for the DP was the DLC movement that started in the late 80s to begin to get the democrats to focus more on moderate, middle of the road issues, to change our image as being the party of big spenders, not fiscally stable, to change our image to get us involved in law enforcement and things to fight crime, and to get us back into a party that people could feel comfortable with on defense or terrorism. I think that was the sea change and I think that will continue to be the dominant strain for the democratic party for the next 10 or 15 years.

Even Senator Kerry, who’s been … tried to be portrayed by the Republican campaign as extraordinarily liberal, isn’t. I mean he voted for welfare reform, he voted to support the crime bill, he voted for a number of balanced budgets and deficit reduction measures. So he’s by no means a garden variety 50’s or 60’s liberal. And I think that’s important for people to understand. Same thing with John Edwards, who’s for fiscal stability and who’s for a balanced budget.

You know the world has sort of turned upside down. Here you have the Republican party running up the biggest deficit in history, and it was only 10 years ago that the Contract for America wanted a constitutional amendment requiring a balanced budget. Where would we be today had that passed? So I think the Democratic Party has become the party of fiscal conservatism, fiscal stability, it’s become the party that’s best suited to fight crime. And I think best suited to fight wars as well.

I think the sea change took place gradually between 88 and 2004, and I think that sea change is going to continue to dominate and control the Democratic Party for the next 10 or 15 years.

[… later …]

It’s a great juxtaposition. There are people on the left who think John Kerry’s too conservative, as well as the Bush administration that’s trying to paint him as a wild-spending liberal. I mean, how they can have the hubris to paint anybody as wild-spending, fiscally liberal is beyond me. I mean they are the epitome of spending money we don’t have and causing us serious problems.

Me: Have they [the Republicans] broken the kind of unwritten rule of moratorium [on campaigning] during the convention?

ER: I think the Vice President has to a degree. I think he has … you’re right, there was always this moratorium that the one party would step aside and let the other party have the four days, and I think to some extent they’ve broken the unwritten rule.

Me: Have you taught the good Senator how to order a cheese steak?

ER: Well, he won’t ever order Swiss cheese again, I can assure you of that … fortunately, Senator Kerry is a good learner.

He was beyond gracious to give the blogosphere some of his valuable time, so “thanks” to him and his press folks.