Strassel on the Dems, Part Duh!

OPINION: "Democrats and Cannibals," by Kimberley A. Strassel, Wall Street Journal 17 August 2007, p. A12.

Just another good summary of the self-destructive influence of the far left on the Dems' chances to both keep the House and Senate and regain the White House. Here Strassel takes a tour of recent Netroots efforts to unseat moderate Dems, a trend I expect to continue in 2008.

And that disturbs me, because no moderate Dems, no majority, and I like my politics more to the middle. So if the Dems blow this moment there's little incentive for the GOP to mirror-image.

If I was Clinton, I would plan to get a grip on all this sentiment for the general election, because in a Hillary-Rudy match, that far left sentiment could prove very bad for her. Naturally, Rudy would face his own problems on the far right, but they'd be more easily--and energetically--mobilized versus Hillary than I expect the far left would be against Giuliani's liberal authoritarianism (a phrase I do not use in jest nor in condemnation, as I see a liberal authoritarian as a nice mix right now, as people want safe but not intrusive--a better normal, as it were, than Bush has signaled or created). Remember this: the Dems' only two presidential victories since 1980 came with sub-majority totals, where the left turned out very heavy and the right was muted and split. That means a Mrs. Clinton victory requires a big good on her side and a couple of bads on the GOP side (her side must commit, her opponents largely omit). That's always a tricky thing, in my mind.

Yes, there are many assumptions about the inevitable Dem win next year, but I've got this thing about such conventional wisdom. Call it my "doubting Thomas" mentality, or maybe it's just the pessimistic Irish in me: when I see a victory that's yours to lose, I pretty much expect you to screw it up.

Why do I have such a queasiness on the Kos people and the Netroots in general?

Going to Wisconsin in the early 1980s, even with my Mao poster up in the dorm room and my deep, earnest immersion in all things socialist (I figured, know the target from the inside or don't know them at all, plus I just loved being radical as a youth--it just felt so natural for that age), I would really get irked whenever the left on campus would basically shout down anybody who didn't agree with them (the classic was when students wouldn't let Kirkpatrick speak, which embarrassed me to no end, despite my great dislike for her). To me, that was the whole point of going to college: trying on ideologies, and working out your logic in debate.

Even my wife, uber-liberal Vonne, found herself so turned off by that vibe that she became the editor of the more conservative "Badger Herald."

Plus, just studying the left in power in socialist regimes made me realize that shutting down the opposition from either side was just plain wrong, and likely to lead to a lot of killing.

I don't have such worries here in the U.S. The Boomers in general elevate politics to a silly degree of zero-sumness: "If they win, I tell you, it's the end of everything!" And that's a sad mirror-imaging of the very phenomenon we seek to temper in places like the Middle East: the winner-takes-all political mindset.

I know, I know, the adversarial mindset is built into our political and legal systems, and there's much to admire in both. I just wish we'd turn off the neverending campaign mentality when given the chance to rule so lawmakers would do what's right more often than obsessing over how to keep or regain majority status.

Comments

[Louis Heberlein]

I had this Vision. The Petraeus report triggers a transformation in politics and the media. Old hand thinkers from both parties and the academic community emerge and replace the shouting heads on TV to quietly show how the previously isolated partial truths and treasured simple ideological insights could be molded into an overall approach that has broad public consensual acceptance.

The billions of dollars and thousands of lives since 9/11 will be seen as the traditional military function of buying time so that broader lasting solutions could be developed and implemented.

Political and public representatives from Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, and Iran will be invited to watch the evolution of this agonizing, but properly motivated U.S. national policy. It will become a mentoring experience in how consensual government can work in hard times.

The violent militant enemy establishments will realize the the success that seemed so close and inevitable had eventually cost them critical casualties and degraded public credibility. They could still revitalize in time, but it just might take too much time if America's new strategies were pursued.

The newspaper headlines in my Vision start in October.

Well, Visions are mostly just virtual realities!

[Christopher Thompson]

I think the thing Ms. Strassel ignores is that these are groups that are simply trying to move the center of the discussion their direction. Certainly group on the opposite side of Kos have been very successful as moving the entire discussion on many subjects right in the last decade. You can't fault one side doing what the other does -- especially since it is the essence of their existence.