Victor Davis Hanson takes note of a development I've been talking about from time to time - the increasingly difficult task Democrats are having coordinating their leftwing extremist supporters with winning votes in middle America:
The Moveon.org "Betray us" ad, the visits of Reps. Pelosi and Kucinich to Syria while it serially assassinates democratic reformers in Lebanon, the Columbia invitation to Ahmadinejad, the refusal to let Larry Summers speak at UC Davis, the Stanford protests over Donald Rumsfeld attending tasking forces at Hoover as a visiting fellow, the various Hollywood celebrities' embraces with foreign totalitarians-all that is the sort of land mines that mainstream Democratic candidates must step around. More will pop up, since no one in the party has established what is out of bounds.Clinton sort of did in the 1990s and so got elected without ever gaining 50% of the popular vote, and the Ike Republicans likewise did it in the 1950s by gradually marginalizing the John Birch, neo-Confederate, McCarthyite wing.
But so far none of the Democratic candidates has stepped forward to take on the explosive left, and as a result it has only become more emboldened, and before this campaign is over we will see a lot more of these self-inflicted nicks that will finally start to bleed the party.
When the Democrats started to embrace the kook left in response to Dean's surge in late 2003, they were hoping that they could garner votes and money, then placate the left and keep them quite between August and November of the actual election year. They managed this in 2004, barely managed it again in 2006 but it looks like in 2008 the kook left will not allow itself to be set in a corner between August and November. And, honestly, why should they? The Democrats have been taking the votes and money of the kook leftists, and it is time that the kook leftists got their say in whom is nominated and what issues they run on. Of course, the Democrats who are in the real running for the nomination are deathly frightened of having to carry MoveOn and Code Pink into Ohio and Florida - but I think they are caught in a bind.
The problem with the kook left - aside from their treasonous actions vis a vis the war - is that they really believe that the country has swung over to them. The 2006 election results are viewed on the left as a resounding vote in favor of "ending" the war immediately - as well as a vote in favor of a host of leftwing political programs. The fact that 2006 was more a matter of a GOP base unwilling to re-elect a Congress which had failed to carry out the wishes of the GOP base is entirely lost on the left. People like Hillary, however, know what is what - never let it be said that Hillary doesn't know electoral reality. She needs to run as a centrist and figure out a way to depress the GOP vote by at least 5 percentage points (either by a Perot-like third party candidate, or by continuing to play upon the GOP base's annoyance with the GOP) - any Democrat with an ounce of sense knows that to run as a leftist means they'll be crushed as bad as McGovern was in 1972 (it should always be kept in mind that McGovern was running against a GOP President who had been barely elected in 1968 with a plurality of the vote and who was not ragingly popular anywhere - even the GOP base never really warmed to Nixon; and yet McGovern was crushed...simply because he was running as a leftist in an America which was, is and always will be center/right in political orientation). The problem is how to keep the left on board while not running a leftist campaign.
In 2008, I don't think the Democrats will be able to square this circle - and this is why I still believe that Hillary won't secure the nomination...or, if she does, it will be the nomination of a hopelessly divided Democratic party incapable of coming together for November. My view is that the nomination in 2008 will go to whichever candidate most emphatically proclaims the leftwing line and who is least tainted by any past cooperation with President Bush on the war. This puts Obama on the inside track - but if Gore were to jump in (even as late as December), I think he would secure the nomination in a political blow out. Clinton, Inc. will pull out all the stops to try and win - so we'll see an exceptionally nasty primary fight (which will, in turn, depress Democratic prospects in November) - but I don't think they'll be able to stop the leftwing steamroller they called into existence.
Of course, the Democrats could come together early behind a moderate candidate who will command leftwing support because leftwingers decide that half a loaf is better than none. If this were to happen, then the GOP prospects for next year will be exceptionally bleak. The GOP could still win, but it would be an uphill climb. Of course, anyone out there who thinks that leftwingers will compromise for the good of their party and their nation should be advised that the Tooth Fairy also doesn't exist.
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