Left may lead Dems off map

15 December 2004

The message from the election, argues Rep. Stephen Lynch (D- South Boston), is clear: Voters "won't hand over the keys to the White House to a party they feel won't keep them safe."

But how could they have gotten that impression? After all, didn't the Democrats nominate a real war hero, a Vietnam vet who had personally put himself at risk in battle? Didn't speaker after speaker at the Boston convention assure Americans in the most bellicose of terms that they were out to get Osama bin Laden?

Or were voters perhaps swayed by Michael Moore cuddling up to Jimmy Carter at that same convention? By the disconnect between John Kerry's 1991 vote against the first Iraq war and his 2002 vote in favor of the second? Or by the hundreds of thousands of anti-war protesters at the GOP's own convention in New York?

The self-flagellation that accompanies any electoral loss is in full beat. And increasingly people like Lynch or Peter Beinart (the well-regarded editor of The New Republic) are arguing that when it comes to war and national security, Democrats are out of step with America.

Beinart even goes further, analogizing the present moment to 1947, when Democrats were forced to confront their own ambivalence over anti-communism. Back then, the party's more conservative wing seized control.

If Beinart and Lynch are right, Democrats are in trouble. Lynch argues that the "flaw lies more with the party than our candidate." That's true. For all of his nuanced views of diplomacy, Kerry surrounded himself with foreign policy advisers who had little compunction about the use of U.S. force. If Kerry had been elected and if - a critical "if" - he had been able to conduct foreign policy as he saw fit, things wouldn't be all that different than they are under President Bush. But even during the campaign, much of the rest of the Democratic Party - or at least the loudest part of the Democratic Party - was going in a far different direction.

And as far as those loudmouths are concerned, Kerry's loss means they were right. Now this new left - epitomized by Howard Dean and MoveOn - is in full-throated roar, battling not only for the soul but for control of the Democratic Party.

Dean, who could very well be named Democratic National Committee chair, proclaims, "We have tried being `Republican-lite' and it does not work." Given that Dean's domestic agenda differed little from Kerry's, those words are a clear slap at Kerry's stances on Iraq and terrorism. MoveOn, the Internet-based grassroots organization that raised hundreds of millions for Democrats, is even blunter: "It's our party: we bought it, we own it and we're going to take it back."

That may well happen. Organizations like MoveOn, which once griped about pols who sold their ideals to the highest bidder, now realize that the way to play is to become the highest bidder. Yet if the Democratic Party swings left, if it cedes issues of terrorism and security to the GOP, it will confront two problems. One is electoral: The Democratic Party's long slide will continue.

The other problem is more profound. As it was with communism, the battle against Islamic fundamentalism is at its heart a battle to defend the ideals and culture of Western civilization. It won't be easy or quick; "the world will get more dangerous before it gets safer," says Lynch. It is a fight that should be the Democratic Party's highest order of priority; it is one it abdicates at its moral peril.