http://www.americandaily.com/item/4057
Dilemmacrats
Bruce Walker, 12/23/03

Rage is bad politics in America. This land of grateful immigrants tolerates
much, but it does not tolerate serious condescension. Democrats have acted
since January 2001 as if the White House has been occupied by a royal
pretender. This attitude has produced spoiled brat sloganeering:

"George Bush did not receive a majority of the popular vote in November 2000!"

(Only two Democrat presidents since the Civil War have received a
majority of the popular vote; Carter received only a plurality of the
popular vote, when all discarded votes were counted.)

"George Bush lost in Florida!" (He won both the real recount and the myriad
putative recounts; he won the legal battle; the clearest referendum on how
Floridians felt about November 2000 was the November 2002 election, which
Republicans won by a landslide.)

"George Bush is too stupid to be President!" (This desperate accusation was
made against Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt and Ronald
Reagan; each routed supposedly brighter political opponents.)

"George Bush is corrupt!" (This curious claim - made right after defending a
Democrat president who perjured himself, was impeached, was disbarred and
was convicted of contempt of court - is even more curious considering that
Clinton was reelected anyway.)

"George Bush is out of touch with America!" (This dopy charge is made
against a man twice elected Governor of the vast nation that is Texas and
against a man whose favorability ratings, if not his job approval ratings,
have been very high with the American people since May 1998.)

These attacks did never helped Democrats, but did not harm Democrats either,
as long as Democrats knew this were flaky attacks. President Bush quickly
established that he was the sort of sensible, decent political figure which
makes ad hominem attacks counterproductive.

Good politicians understand that dynamic. Republicans did not demonize
Hubert Humphrey, Adlai Stevenson or Walter Mondale. Democrats, back when
they had savvy, did not demonize Gerald Ford, Dwight Eisenhower or Ronald
Reagan. Even those candidates described as dangerous extremists, like
Goldwater and McGovern, were acknowledged to be good men.

Now irrational hate has overwhelmed common sense, and Democrats have created
a terrible and avoidable problem. Democrats have become Dilemmacrats. The
core of the minority Democrat Party actually believes the loony volleys
against President Bush. Anyone who does not agree with this looniness is not
a good Democrat, and so will infuriate the Democrat base.

This has marginalized Democrat candidates like liberal, but civil, Joe
Lieberman and genuine moderates, like John Breaux. Nominating someone like
Lieberman or Breaux would would have allowed other Democrats on the ballot
in November 2004 to run comfortably with their party standard bearer.
President Bush was certainly not going to run to the left of any Democrat
nominee, so a Democrat leaning to the center made great tactical sense.

Presidential candidates like Lieberman and Breaux would also have been good
long term strategy.
Wartime leaders are tough to remove, but their political parties can lose
ground quickly after the war is over - if they have been a loyal opposition
during the war.

After the Second World War ended, the British and American peoples rewarded
the loyal opposition. Labour and Atlee defeated Conservatives and Churchill
in 1945, and Republicans won a landslide victory in 1946.

Democrats have instead been become modern Copperheads. During the Civil War,
Democrats were anything but the loyal opposition. The savage description of
Abraham Lincoln as an illiterate baboon, the peace overtures by McClelland
to the South, and the general disdain throughout the Democrat Party toward
abolition meant that the Civil War would be replayed politically after
Appomattox.

Republicans won this political war decisively. Only one Democrat, Grover
Cleveland, was elected president from 1860 to 1912. Republicans had entered
the Civil War a minority party and emerged as the majority party in Congress
and state governments. Even this understates Republican dominance. Blacks
were overwhelmingly Republican for the fifty years after the Civil War, and
black voters were disenfranchised not only in the South but in much of the
North.

Howard Dean has tapped into the hatred of Bush that easily trumps concern
about the terrorist war waged against America. Dean is not smart, not wise,
not kind and not honest - but he is very, very angry. Like McClelland in
1864, Dean is arrogant and contemptuous of the bumpkin president from the
backwoods of America.

Cool heads in the Democrat Party should have seen how catastrophic the
Molotov Cocktail from Montpelier might be to their plans to regain power,
but venom has caused a feverish delusion that everyone hates President Bush
like they do.

Now, as President Bush shows us a liberated Afghanistan, a liberated Iraq, a
compliant Libya, a friendlier Europe, and a more sympathetic Canada no one
can seriously say the things that Dean has been saying for years. War crimes
trials of Hussein will make Dean Democrats look soft on genocide (not a good
thing.)

Only a mad dash from Bush-loathing can prevent a Democrat debacle in
November. But Dilemmacrats cannot sabotage the man who is saying what many
Democrat diehards believe without looking worse than phony.

Why, if Dean is so bad, has everyone been quiet until now? What, then, do
Democrats really believe? How different do other Democrats really sound from
Dean? And will Dean go gently into political oblivion? Democrats are on the
horns of a dilemma, but it is a dilemma of their own making. They have
become Dilemmacrats.