QandO

July 29, 2004

The Deceptiveness of the Democrats
Posted by Dale Franks

Bob Novak points out the interesting dichotomy between what the Dem convention delegates believe...

The truth obscured by deception at the FleetCenter popped out in multiple ways. On Sunday, the day before the convention began, the New York Times-CBS poll of about one-fourth of the 4,322 convention delegates put them to the left of most Americans and most fellow Democrats -- including John Kerry. Nine of 10 delegates polled totally oppose the Iraq war, three-fourths support abortion on demand, only 4 percent back tax cuts, and only 5 percent oppose recognition of gay marriage.

...and what their platform says.

Anti-war activists dropped demands for U.S. troops to leave Iraq at a time certain. The platform handles divisive issues by simply ignoring them. It does not even mention partial-birth abortion, gay marriage, capital punishment, Alaska oil drilling or the Kyoto global warming treaty. It is hard to believe that such staples of liberal ideology could be kept out of a Democratic platform, but they were.

This is not, however, a good thing for the Democratic Party.

Let us assume Kerry is elected. Immediately after his election, the Left will demand certain policies, and Kerry will likely try to procure their passage. Now, as it happens, we've already seen how that works out, because that's more or less what Bill Clinton did upon assuming office. After running an election campaign in which he purported to be a moderate New Democrat, his first major initiatives were to repeal the ban on Gays in the military, and to implement Ms. Clinton's national health care plan.

Voters registered their disapproval at the first opportunity by putting both the House and Senate solidly under Republican control in 1994, a situation that, for the most part, has obtained to this day.

Bill Clinton, however, was a masterful politician. Indeed, whether you like him or not, the fact remains that he is this generation's finest politician. His response was to immediately move to the right, and to govern as a moderate/conservative.

If John Kerry cannot make that kind of transition, and I suspect that, as a far poorer politician, he cannot, he will cement the idea among the electorate that the Democrats have turned into a collection of Leftist whack jobs, which, as far as the party activist population is concerned, is essentially true.

Kerry will, in fact, have to deal with a vocal party constituency for withdrawal from Iraq, a blanket proscription against any forceful action against Iran, and calls for a leftward move in social policy, in terms of national health care, gay marriage, etc. If he goes along with that pressure from his party, it will amount to a rejection of the public stands he's taken--at least, as far as we can determine what his stands actually are--that will make him look weak and indecisive at best, and duplicitous at worst.

That bodes ill for future Democratic electibility.

But a Kerry loss wouldn't be much better. A chief complaint among Democrats about the 2000 election was that Gore lost because he didn't move far enough to the left. A Kerry loss in this election practically promises that on 2008, the Democratic Party's candidate, whoever she may be, will be forced much farther to the Left than even she finds comfortable.

Again, this will show the electorate that the Dems have descended into leftist moonbattery for the most part, harming their electoral chances for a generation.

For every Barack Obama, Harold Ford or Evan Bayh in the Democratic Party, there are three Charlie Rangels, Dennis Kuciniches, and Michael Moores. That's simply not helpful because a healthy political life demands that the country is presented with reasonable alternatives from both a center-right and center-left party. Being stuck with a center-right party and a moonbat leftist party doesn't fulfill that requirement.

Even more frightrening, if the center-right starts to feel they have a firm enough grip on power, the temptation to engage in a little moonbattery of their own might be too strong to withstand.

Still, perhaps the only solution to the current situation is for the Democrats to let the Left wing of the party call the shots until a series of McGovern-like electoral drubbings either a) brings the rest of the party back to their senses so that they reject the far Left, just as Niel Kinnock did with the British Labour Party in the 1980s, or b) starts the creation of a real center-left party that leaves the Democrats to go the way of the Whigs.

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