It’s a peculiarity of modern political discourse that Democrats who hold strong positions on two non-ideological issues are labeled as leftists.
Opposition to the war in Iraq and disgust at the depredations of the Bush administration aren’t limited to the Democratic left, such as it is; they’re not even limited to Democrats. Despite that, political analysts continue to insist that these positions, held by the overwhelming majority of Democrats, along with a smaller majority of independents and substantial numbers of Republicans, are somehow liberal ones.
The latest to join the parade is Knight Ridder’s Steven Thomma, who leads with the proposition in a warmup piece on the 2008 presidential campaigns. “Anti-war and anti-Bush fervor,” says Thomma, “is threatening to pull the party to the left and creating a rift between increasingly belligerent activists and the party’s leaders in Washington.”
A strong stand — “fervor,” according to Thomma, something only once removed from delirium — on virtually any issue is enough to brand virtually any Democrat a leftist, but this construction is particularly absurd. Nearly 70% of the country find Bush wanting, and considerably more than half are convinced that the war was a mistake and that the president sold it with lies. Among Democrats, the percentage who agree with the former proposition is approaching 100, while fewer than one in five think the war was warranted. By Thomma’s yardstick, somewhere between 80% and 100% of Democrats, the ones outside Congress and the unelected party leadership, are on the left end of the party spectrum.
By the same standard, the conservative-leaning Democratic Congressman Jack Murtha is a leftist. So are Bill Buckley and Republican Congressmen Ron Paul. So is Tennessee Republican John Duncan, Jr., who approvingly quoted Buckley on the House floor. Pat Buchanan is on the left. So is Tucker Carlson. So is any Republican who opposed the war before it began or opposes it now, and so is any Republican who finds Bush odious.
In fact, Thomma doesn’t quote a single Democrat who regards opposition to the war or to Bush as leftist positions, although he probably could have. He does, however, identify the crux of the problem.
[A]dmitting a crucial mistake, not to mention coming out in direct opposition to the war, could scare politicians who fear that opposing even an unpopular war could be seen as being anti-military.“Some of our elected officials feel somewhat leery of looking being weak on national security issues because Republicans have been successful in the past painting Democrats as weak on national security,” said New Hampshire Democratic Party chairwoman Kathy Sullivan. “That’s where the tension comes from.”
Indeed. This has nothing to do with left or right: it has to do with an ingrained timidity, and a fundamental confusion among powerful Democrats of tough talk and stubborn stupidity with actual pragmatic toughness on national security issues.
Both traits are inherently self-destructive, and the Democrats who suffer them are in a race with Republicans to see who will be the first to crash and burn. Democrats who oppose the war and think much of what Bush has done during the past six years warrants investigation aren’t trying to drag that timorous minority to the left; just back to reality.
