Pushing Democrats to the Left II

The Washington Post reports on my worst nightmare:

Democrats are getting an early glimpse of an intraparty rift that could complicate efforts to win back the White House: fiery liberals raising their voices on Web sites and in interest groups vs. elected officials trying to appeal to a much broader audience.

These activists -- spearheaded by battle-ready bloggers and making their influence felt through relentless e-mail campaigns -- have denounced what they regard as a flaccid Democratic response to the Supreme Court fight, President Bush's upcoming State of the Union address and the Iraq war. In every case, they have portrayed party leaders as gutless sellouts.

What is it with so many liberals and the War on Iraq? It is really the defining issue for them and I don't understand why. The war was done to liberate a huge country from a tyrannical dictator. Many liberals thought it was just for the oil, but seeing as the country still isn't producing oil at the level it was before the war, that just doesn't seem to be true.

Another frequently used argument that liberals raise about the war is that, "the president lied to us." While it does seem to be true that the President may have ignored some intelligence that pointed to no WMDs, there was still an overwhelmingly amount of evidence that Saddam did have weapons (this is the one area where conservatives have solid footing in defending the decision to go to war). But even if Bush was ignoring evidence that WMDs were not there, then that just furthers the liberation of Iraq reasoning, one that seems to mesh with many liberal ideas (I know that is why I supported the decision to go to war).

So where does that leave liberals? Well on little to no solid footing and this is precisely why the Democrats are trying to ignore this wing of the party. The Democrats are not going to win any seats in 2006 by playing to this constituency. The 2008 Presidential Election is probably going to come down to national security again, and no Democrat is going to win who is not seen as a hawk (Hillary gets this).

This wing of the Democratic Party got its bone when Dean was made head of the DNC. They need to shut up if they want to see their party get into office. I know Republicans are probably loving the coverage of this.

All I can hope for is that either a moderate Democrat makes it through the primary, or McCain runs, as an independent or Republican.

-Mr. Alec