Inappropriate Content: Sister You-Know-Who

Dug up from the archives: A post I wrote way back on, ah, March 3rd. Ah, the good old days. I remember them well.

Why did the Republicans start winning? Because the leadership of the party finally started reigning in the wingnuts that had a disproportionate amount of influence. Essentially the Christian Coalition was told that while their views would be respected as much as possible they were not going to set the agenda. Partial birth abortion, an issue which resonates with the electorate would be pushedbut youll never see Bush, or any other senior Republican, publicly speak about overturning Roe v. Wade.

The religious right was basically told that truth of the situation was that they had no viable option but to play along. Any other action would see what they were fighting for further eroded.

Which is true enough, and thank you very much, Mr. Buchanan. But it takes more than one party gaining strength; the Democrats are making mistakes.

Meanwhile a small, vocal segment of the Democratic Party has begun to have a disproportionate amount of influence. One of the reason that Kerry seemed to waffle was the fear of offending the DU and dKos crowd. In the end Kerry had to say that while the reasons to go to war were bad were stuck with it. We need to defend America and this is how the Democratic Party would do it. Too little, too late. Many Americans didnt feel that Kerry was really serious about it. They may not have fully been behind Bushs vision, but they felt that he was serious. Pandering to the DUers and the dKossacks, to the Dean crowd, made Kerry look indecisive and not serious. Christmas in Cambodia, The Magic Hat and the Swifties all played a big rollbut arguments as equally damning, Bushs ill-spent youth and young adulthood, rolled off his back. Because all that happened long ago in a different world that didnt have crazed Jihadis flying planes into buildings. Bush was serious.

And before we discuss if this is true, let's admit that it is commonly taken for truth among on the right; in politics, that's just as bad, if not worse. Walt complains about it all the time, as do the Token Young Conservatives; these blogs are not, I think, atypical examples of intelligent conservative views.

But there is a mistake being made here. It's not that a vocal, radical minority is hijacking the Democratic party from some centrist leadership. It looks that way because the Democratic party no longer has any real leadership, and without an organization, the loudest voices are easiest to hear. (After all, there was no shortage of moderate conservatives in 1992, but they had no one to rally around; and so Buchanan seemed louder than he really was, and he made moderate conservatives not feel so bad about voting for Bill Clinton.) The Clintonites and the DLC, after all, provided the structure and backbone of the Democratic party for the best part of a decade, but they either slipped away after 2000 or exhausted themselves during the infighting of the '04 primary. To top it off, Kerry never really had the campaign infrastructure or plain and simple charisma required to build a strong base of moderates.

I'll repeat: radicals have not hijacked the Democratic Party. There is simply a lack of powerful leadership in the party to keep the radicals in line. In the short-term, things are improving. Hillary Clinton's recent centrist maneouvering, especially on abortion, is a good example. Even arch-conservative (an not exactly a credit to his party) David Limbaugh admits:

I have always considered Hillary Clinton a formidable politician, but I haven't really feared a Hillary presidency because I haven't thought she was electable. I'm not quite as sure anymore.

Hillary is polarizing, but that's hardly a disqualifying attribute. So are her husband and President Bush, both of whom were elected twice. Indeed, in today's partisan climate, almost any strong leader of either party will ultimately be deemed polarizing.

And of course Joe Biden is optimistic about her chances. The Times of India covers Hillary beefing up her forign policy bona fides: during a recent visit, Indian Members of Parliment “completely bowled over by the former US first lady. [They] did not conceal their excitement about the meeting.” And of course all us left-wing bloggers are raving about her.

But talk of a unifying figure running in 2008 (can you belive I just called Hillary Clinton a unifying figure?) is talk of what is, at best, a short-term solution. Martin Peretz has a long look at the dearth of ideas in the Democratic party in last weeks The New Republic.