In a NYT Sunday Magazine feature on Howard Dean, Matt Bai laments:

There were more Democrats in Central Park for the Dave Matthews concert a few years back than there are in the entire state of Alaska — all 656,000 square miles of it.

Investors Business Daily gives 97 Reasons Democrats Are Weak On Defense And Can’t Be Trusted To Govern In Wartime.

Let’s just quote the first 10:

Jimmy Carter, elected during the Cold War with the Soviet Union, and (1) believing Americans had an inordinate fear of communism, (2) lifted U.S. citizens’ travel bans to Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam and Cambodia and (3) pardoned draft evaders.

President Carter (4) also stopped B-1 bomber production, (5) gave away our strategically located Panama Canal and (6) made human rights the central focus of his foreign policy.

That led Carter, a Democrat, (7) to make a monumental miscalculation and withdraw U.S. support for our long-standing Mideast military ally, the Shah of Iran. (8) Carter simply didn’t like the Shah’s alleged mistreatment of imprisoned Soviet spies.

The Soviets, (9) with close military ties to Iraq, a 1,500-mile border with Iran and eyes on Afghanistan, aggressively tried to encircle, infiltrate, subvert and overthrow Iran’s government for its oil deposits and warm-water ports several times after Russian troops attempted to stay there at the end of WWII. These were all communist threats to Iran that Carter never understood.

Carter (10) thought Ayatollah Khomeini, a Muslim exile in Paris, would make a fairer Iranian leader than the Shah because he was a religious man…

Andy Borowitz imagines a colorful twist in the race for the 2008 democrat nomination: “A Blue Dress for the Blue States.”

In a development that could drastically alter the playing field of the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, former White House intern Monica Lewinsky confirmed today that she was considering making a bid for the Democratic nod in 2008.

According to those familiar with her political plans, Lewinsky plans to offer herself as an alternative to the presumptive frontrunner in the race, Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y.

Rumors of Lewinsky’s intentions spread like wildfire this week, when the erstwhile intern made a series of stops in New Hampshire, location of the nation’s first presidential primary.

Wearing a midnight blue cocktail dress, Lewinsky drew large crowds across the state, suggesting that she could be a real threat to Clinton in a head-to-head race.

“Voters are worn out from George Bush, Iraq and the war on terror,” said Democratic voter Jayson Tenzer, who attended one of Lewinsky’s New Hampshire rallies. “Monica Lewinsky means good times.”

According to Professor Davis Logsdon of the political science department at the University of Minnesota, offering herself as an alternative to Sen. Clinton could be a successful strategy for Lewinsky: “It’s worked before.”

And while some Democratic insiders worry that Lewinsky lacks the political know-how to be president of the United States, Professor Logsdon does not share those concerns: “Monica Lewinsky has actually had more experience in the Oval Office than Hillary Clinton has.”

Elsewhere, one day after President Hugo Chavez appeared at the United Nations and called him “Satan,” President Bush said, “I think he has me mixed up with Cheney.”

The New York Times reports that democrats, relying on polls showing public approval numbers for President Bush dropping, are making opposition to Bush the main focus of their campaigns.

Mr. Bush’s image this fall is being invoked by Democrats as a proxy for Americans who want change in Washington; who oppose the war in Iraq; who think Mr. Bush has not done enough to protect the nation from future terrorist attacks; or who are angry with changes Mr. Bush has pressed in Medicare.

“It’s not just photos,” said John Lapp, who runs the Democratic campaign committee’s independent advertising program. “It’s statements and actions and votes that show a pattern of people being with Bush.”

Steve Murphy, a consultant whose firm made the Iraq advertisement for Ms. Madrid of New Mexico, said: “The war is a dominant issue. For all these Republican candidates who are going through gyrations to distance themselves from Bush — well, if they support Bush on the war, there is nothing more illustrative of the fact that they are in bed with Bush.”

Senator Charles E. Schumer, the New York Democrat leading his party’s campaign to take back the Senate, said: “In 2004, people were still happy with Bush’s course in Iraq. Now they are not.”

Peggy Noonan, in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, explained why Bush-hatred just isn’t enough.

Pundits and historians call Mr. Bush polarizing — and he is, but in some unusual ways. For one thing, he’s not trying to polarize. He is not saying, “My team is for less government, your team is for more — my team, stand with me!”

Mr. Bush has muddied what his team stands for. He has made it all come down to him — not to philosophy but to him and his certitudes.

What is polarizing about him is the response he elicits from Americans just by being himself. They have deep questions about him, even as he is vivid to them.

Americans don’t really know, deep down in their heads, whether this president, in his post-9/11 decisions, is a great man or a catastrophe, a visionary or wholly out of his depth.

What they increasingly sense is that he’s one thing or the other. And this is not a pleasant thing to sense. The stakes are so high. If you woke most Americans up at 3:00 in the morning and said, “Tell me, looking back, what would you have liked in an American president after 9/11?” most of them would answer, “I was just hoping for a good man who did moderately good things.” Who caught Osama, cleaned out Afghanistan, made it proof of the possibility of change and of the price to be paid by those who choose terror as a tactic. Not this historical drama queen, this good witch or bad.

The one thing I think America agrees on is that George Bush and his presidency have been enormously consequential. He has made decisions that will shape the future we’ll inhabit. It’s never “We must do this” with Mr. Bush. It’s always “the concentrated work of generations.” He doesn’t declare, he commits; and when you back him, you’re never making a discrete and specific decision, you’re always making a long-term investment.

This can be exhausting…

With all this polarity, this drama, this added layer Mr. Bush brings to a nation already worn by the daily demands of modern individual life, the political alternative, the Democrats, should roar in six weeks from now, right? And return us to normalcy?

Well, that’s not what I sense.

I like Democrats. I feel sympathy for the hungry and hapless, identify with aspirations, am deeply frustrated with Mr. Bush. More seriously, I believe we are at the start of a struggle for the survival of the West, and I know it is better for our country if both of its two major parties have equal responsibility in that struggle. Beyond that, let’s be frank. Bad days are coming, and we’re all going to have to get through them together, with two parties, arm in arm. It’s a big country.

But I feel the Democrats this year are making a mistake. They think it will be a cakewalk. A war going badly, immigration, high spending, a combination of sentimentality and dimness in foreign affairs — everyone in the world wants to be free, and in exactly the way we define freedom at dinner parties in McLean and Chevy Chase — and conservative thinkers and writers hopping mad and hoping to lose the House.

The Democrats’ mistake — ironically, in a year all about Mr. Bush — is obsessing on Mr. Bush. They’ve been sucker-punched by their own animosity.

“The Democrats now are incapable of answering a question on policy without mentioning Bush six times,” says pollster Kellyanne Conway. “What is your vision on Iraq? ‘Bush lied us into war.’ Health care? ‘Bush hasn’t a clue.’ They’re so obsessed with Bush it impedes them from crafting and communicating a vision all their own.” They heighten Bush by hating him.

One of the oldest clichés in politics is, “You can’t beat something with nothing.” It’s a cliché because it’s true. You have to have belief, and a program. You have to look away from the big foe and focus instead on the world and philosophy and programs you imagine.

Mr. Bush’s White House loves what the Democrats are doing. They want the focus on him. That’s why he’s out there talking, saying Look at me.

Because familiarity doesn’t only breed contempt, it can breed content. Because if you’re going to turn away from him, you’d better be turning toward a plan, and the Democrats don’t appear to have one.

Which leaves them unlikely to win leadership. And unworthy of it, too.

Democrat control of either house of Congress will almost certainly result in grandstanding Congressional committees investigating alleged violations of international law and human rights in the detention and interrogation of terrorists. It has been generally recognized that restraints on US Intelligence operations imposed as a result of the 1970s Frank Church-led CIA hearings had a great deal to do with the government’s failure to prevent the 9/11 attacks. The consequences of another Congressional Intelligence witch hunt are likely to be just as devastating.

The Washington Post reports that CIA officers are buying Congressional politics insurance.

It takes our own unique combination of vicious partisanship, habitual domestic treason, and opportunistic litigation to produce the need for such insurance for those who protect America from foreign enemies. We could translate Juvenal’s Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? differently today: Who will defend our defenders

CIA counterterrorism officers have signed up in growing numbers for a government-reimbursed, private insurance plan that would pay their civil judgments and legal expenses if they are sued or charged with criminal wrongdoing, according to current and former intelligence officials and others with knowledge of the program…

Justice Department political appointees have strongly backed the CIA interrogations. But “there are a lot of people who think that subpoenas could be coming” from Congress after the November elections or from federal prosecutors if Democrats capture the White House in 2008, said a retired senior intelligence officer who remains in contact with former colleagues in the agency’s Directorate of Operations, which ran the secret prisons.

“People are worried about a pendulum swing” that could lead to accusations of wrongdoing, said another former CIA officer.

The insurance policies were bought from Arlington-based Wright and Co., a subsidiary of the private Special Agents Mutual Benefit Association created by former FBI officials. The CIA has encouraged many of its officers to take out the insurance, current and former intelligence officials said, but no one interviewed would reveal precisely how many have bought policies…

The insurance, costing about $300 a year, would pay as much as $200,000 toward legal expenses and $1 million in civil judgments. Since the late 1990s, the CIA’s senior managers have been eligible for reimbursement of half the insurance premium.

In December 2001, with congressional authorization, the CIA expanded the reimbursements to 100 percent for CIA counterterrorism officers. That was about the time J. Cofer Black, then the CIA’s counterterrorism chief, told Bush that “the gloves come off” and promised “heads on spikes” in the counterterrorism effort.

“Why would [CIA officers] take any risks in their professional duties if the government was unwilling to cover the cost of their liability?” asked Rep. Rob Simmons (R-Conn.), a former CIA officer, during congressional debate that year.

Although suing federal officials for their actions is not easy, it is possible; the Supreme Court left the door ajar in two rulings. It ruled in 1971 that six narcotics agents could be sued for monetary damages arising from a warrantless search. Eleven years later, it held that government officials should be immune from civil liability only if their conduct does not violate clear statutory or constitutional rights that should be known by “a reasonable person.”

William L. Bransford, a senior partner at the law firm that defends people who take out the insurance, said he is unaware of any recent increase in claims. But agency officials said that interest has been stoked over the years by the $2 million legal bill incurred by CIA officer Clair George before his 1992 conviction for lying to Congress about the Iran-contra arms sales; by the Justice Department’s lengthy investigation of CIA officers for allegedly lying to Congress about the agency’s role in shooting down a civilian aircraft in 2001 in Peru; and by other events.

CIA employees outside the counterterrorism field who are eligible for reimbursement include the agency’s supervisors, attorneys, equal-opportunity- employment counselors, auditors, polygraph examiners, security adjudicators, grievance officers, inspectors general and internal investigators, he said. One in 10 eligible employees sought reimbursement last year, Mansfield said, adding that the fraction from previous years and a breakdown on those in the counterterrorism field were not immediately available.

The NAACP is acting as the democrat party’s proxy in pushing for restoring the right to vote to convicted felons. Doubtless, democrat strategists’ thinking has been influenced by the narrow margin of the 2000 presidential election, and the close contests in several states in 2004. Add another 98,000 brig rat democrat voters in Tennesee in the 2000 election and Gore wins 1,079,720 to 1,061,949. Now they’re playing the race card and pulling out all the stops to get those extra votes.

Jackson (Tennessee) Sun

Montgomery (Alabama) Advertiser

The small number of convicted criminals who have really reformed, and who may be capable of playing a constructive role in the political process, are adequately served by existing pardon and restoration of rights programs. We have more voting fraud than we need already without the introduction of one more ethically unconstrained democrat voting base.

Should he really be deciding our elections?

It is sometimes interesting to read the European perspective on American events.

Alexandre Adler in Le Figaro thinks the defeat of Joe Lieberman in the Connecticut Primary marks the alliance of the heirs of old-fashioned Patrician Anti-semitism with the New Left, and predicts this “slap in the face” to Jewish democrat voters may very possibly provoke the final Exodus of this key constituent of the Roosevelt-era democrat party voting bloc alliance from what is rapidly becoming something completely alien to them.

(translated by JDZ)

We know very well that over the course of a few decades in complex situations small causes can produce great effects. The defeat in the democratic primary election of the senator from Connecticut, Joe Lieberman, seems, at first sight, a secondary episode of the political battle, primarily related to the very great number of voters absent on summer vacation rather than with the much more noted, but undoubtedly conjectural, rejection of the Iraqi policy of George W. Bush.

These perfectly logical explanations do not, however, take into account the dynamics which, even at this moment, underway as a sequel to this electoral battle, will find their conclusion at the beginning of November with the election of a third of the Senate, because Lieberman, rudely evicted from his own party, has just announced that he will run as an independent candidate with the neutrality, if not the tacit support, of the Republican Party and the White House.

Admittedly, Joe Lieberman is not simply an innocent victim who has devoted himself to following faithfully his constituent’s opinions. His very critical attitude towards the escapades of President Clinton when the latter was menaced with impeachment, argues neither in favor of his honesty, nor in favor of his authentic moral rectitude. It was, moreover, on the part of Al Gore a sign of profound baseness of character to choose Lieberman as his running-mate for the presidential race of the year 2000, so as to distance himself from outgoing president Clinton, whose job performance was still exceptionally good. However, Lieberman has not been punished for his very real sins; but, on the contrary, for his undeniable courage in the War on Terrorism, for his continued support, in the face of adverse winds and tides, of the Near-Eastern strategy of George W. Bush.

His adversary, a young billionaire leftist of the name of Lamont, very openly wanted to make this battle the crucial moment of affirmation for the new pacifist and isolationist wing of the Democratic Party, which has been triumphing little by little over the moderates. If Senator Kerry again succeeded in 2004 in containing the pacifist-populist forces whose spokesman, polemicist documentary-filmmaker Michael Moore, had become the flag-bearer, subsequent events ultimately led to the defeat of the pragmatic approach among democrats. Former Vermont Governor Howard Dean since then became Chairman of the party. Kerry himself inflicted great harm in his presidential campaign upon the presidency. And now that Lieberman has been thrown out by a militant wing which uses the weapon of the blog massively, there is no taboo against noting the conspicuous Jewish Orthodox affiliation of the outgoing senator, who has not hesitated to return to the Capitol on Friday evenings, escorted by a procession of police cars obliged to drive to their steps. While the studies of some political economists rather unfortunately inspired denunciations of the excessive influence of the Jewish and Israeli lobby on the foreign policy of the Bush Administration, the winner of the recent democratic primary did not hesitate to criticize the State of Israel for its warmongering. Just like Howard Dean, and like his neighbor Hamilton Fish, Lamont has joined the party of the Protestant patriciate of the past to the extreme left, bringing with him a heritage of hostility toward Israel characteristic of his social background, in former times one loyal to the Republican Party of Eisenhower, like the grandfather of the current president, who was… also a senator from Connecticut.

It is not impossible that, if current tendencies continue, we are witnessing the last upheavals which will complete the transformation of the Democratic Party. The party which had been, since Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the party of union members (which Lieberman always defended without hesitation), a party overwhelmingly patriotic, in love with the military and the draft, fundamentally hostile to all forms of isolationism, and finally the party of minorities mistreated by White Anglo-Saxon Protestants.

What is conventionally called “neoconservatism” is nothing other than the movement, more or less quickly, by which the skilled workers, the anti-isolationists and, more and more, those closest to the people, the Catholic communities, Irish and Italian, join the Republican Party by rejecting the new democratic left. While Jewish intellectuals (of greater or lesser reputation) orchestrated this movement following the end of the war in Vietnam, they did not remain any less a minority within a community always in the majority firmly Democrat. With the election of a Republican Jewish mayor in New York, Michael Bloomberg (who very recently left the Democratic Party and succeeded the most famous of the neoconservatives, Rudy Giuliani), as with the rallying of the Californian Jewish electorate to the candidacy of Schwartzenegger, here now Connecticut’s slap in the face may cause the swing of all the great centers of Jewish votes – New York, New Jersey, Miami, Chicago – in the direction of a Republican Party which integrates the Catholics more and more, and calls in a very visible fashion to Middle Class Hispanics and blacks.

We are certainly at a turning point of both American domestic and foreign policy, but the neodemocrats have not triumphed yet. It remains to be seen, indeed, if the American people who placed their confidence in Roosevelt, Truman, and Kennedy will be able to identify themselves with a pacifist, anti-Zionist, and narcissistic party, whose group direction will be given the lead by the humanitarian lamentations of enthused starlets and the producers of screen spectacles who aspire to direct the State. These people do not prepare us for cold realities which many fear, but are quite simply the impulse toward frivolity of the primary world power.

————-
Hat tip to Matthias Storme.

Thomas B. Edsall, in New Republic, discusses the negative influence of liberal elites.

The Lieberman-Lamont primary is a study, writ small, in what has ailed the Democratic Party over the last few decades. Simply put, Democratic presidential primary electorates continue to be dominated by an upscale, socially (and culturally) liberal elite. Democrats must first win the approval of this elite before they can compete in the general election. It’s a trap that no Democrat other than Bill Clinton has found a way to escape, and Lamont’s victory shows why.

In a quick and dirty analysis of the difference between the Lamont and Lieberman voters based on income, education, and other demographic data from across Connecticut, Ken Strasma of Strategic Telemetry found that Lamont’s strongest support came from areas with high housing values, voters with college or graduate degrees, and parents with children in private schools. Lieberman’s votes, in contrast, came from the cities, renters, blue-collar and service-sector workers, and those receiving Social Security benefits.

There is nothing wrong with upscale liberals or downscale renters; a vote is a vote. The problem for the Democrats is (and has been for more than a quarter century) that liberal elites are disproportionately powerful in primaries–where they turn out in much higher numbers–and in the operations of the party itself. In presidential campaigns, these voters have nominated a succession of losers, including George McGovern, Michael Dukakis and John Kerry. The power of this wing of the party is easy to see in battles against Republican Supreme Court nominees, when Democratic opposition concentrates on such issues as abortion and sexual privacy to the virtual exclusion of questions of business versus labor, tort law, and the power of the state to regulate corporate activity.

For the Democrats, the influence of the upscale left has increased the party’s vulnerability to charges that it is weak on threats to the nation’s security and that its candidates are far from mainstream on social issues. Although the public has lost faith in President Bush and the GOP on a wide range of issues, the GOP continues to hold one trump card: terrorism. A May 10 New York Times/CBS News poll showed voters preferring Republicans to Democrats on terrorism by a margin of 40-35 percent. A more telling finding was in an Associated Press/Ipsos survey released July 14. It found that voters may not be thrilled with the way Republicans in Congress are dealing with terrorism (54 percent unfavorable, 43 favorable), but they are downright hostile to the Democrats’ approach (62 percent negative, 33 positive).

Patrick Hynes notes:

Um, the Bush Candidate got 48% in a Dem Primary [!]

———————–

Hat tip to Glenn Reynolds.

In François Truffaut’s film Jules et Jim (1962), the lives of two Bohemian male friends, one French, one Austrian (played by Henri Serre and Oskar Werner), in pre-WWI Paris are changed forever by their making the acquaintance of the fascinating and mercurial Catherine (Jeanne Moreau). Catherine is a kind of Anima, a force of Nature, a far stronger and more interesting personality than either of the pair, and she easily dominates one after another in turn, until Jim attempts to rebel. Catherine then responds by luring Jim into an automobile, and driving (with him in the car) straight off a bridge.

The democrat party is a lot like Jules and Jim: ineffectual and harmless in itself, but fundamentally allied to, and (in a way) in love with an activist radical left, which it cannot do without, cannot possibly control, and which (like Catherine) is not very nice underneath it all, and (like Catherine) dangerously mad.

Much of the democrat base is made up of people (like Catherine), who carry around a personal bottle of vitriol (“for lying eyes”), who are capable of turning mercilessly upon those closest to themselves (even those whom they have very recently supported for Vice President).

And (like Catherine), too, the democrat base’s madness has every likelihood of always, and inevitably, ending in (electoral) suicide.

One pictures Hillary Clinton walking out of the cemetery after installing the ashes of Joe Lieberman’s democrat party career in the niche, marching off sadly (like Jules). But, in this case, though Catherine may have committed suicide, she cannot herself die, and will get to commit suicide again and again.

I knew he was a commie, of course. But not until I read Martin Peretz, in the Wall Street Journal, did I realise that he is an hereditary commie of impeccable red-diaper origins: old money, with Exeter, Harvard, and Stalin as family traditions.

Left-wing Democrats are once again fielding single-issue “peace candidates,” and the one in Connecticut, like several in the 1970s, is a middle-aged patrician, seeking office de haut en bas, and almost entirely because he can. It’s really quite remarkable how someone like Ned Lamont, from the stock of Morgan partner Thomas Lamont and that most high-born American Stalinist, Corliss Lamont, still sends a chill of “having arrived” up the spines of his suburban supporters simply by asking them to support him.

Jed Babbin contemplates the left wing of the democrat party’s impending excommunicaion of Joe Lieberman with glee, noting the concommitant assurance of that party’s permanent minority status.

the Michael Moore-Pinch Sulzberger-Cindy Sheehan Dems are about to purge poor ol’ Joe Lieberman from their party in Tuesday’s primary because he supports the war in Iraq. There’s no other issue among the Dems, as Chris Matthews rehearsed yesterday. Dan Rathercadaver — resurrected by Matthews to make his Sunday show the greatest black comedy since Dr. Strangelove — agreed solemnly. There’s no greater crime for a Dem than to voice any opinion other than the one the Washington Post wrote in an editorial on July 16, wringing its hands and blaming W for all the world’s ills: “But in the press of cascading crises, it is crucial that the administration not lose focus on the two wars it started and has yet to win.” (Italics added, superfluously.)

According to the Quinnipiac University poll released Thursday, Ned Lamont leads Lieberman by 54-41 percent. If Lieberman loses, we should be very grateful. If the anti-Bush media and the Democrats who follow its orders succeed in purging Lieberman, if they succeed in this danse macabre, the Dems will be headed off a cliff and not back to the White House in 2008.

A Lieberman loss will do two things. First, it will prevent the Dems from recovering from their leftward flat spin, and take them into the ground. Hard. Further claims to moderation or credibility on national defense will be laughable to anyone not sharing Bush Derangement Syndrome…

Second, a Lieberman loss will give uncontested control of the Democratic Party to its most left-leaning media bosses. Never forget, dear friends, that there are two political parties in America: the Republicans and the mainstream media. The Dems are so bereft of ideas, so unable to think seriously on any topic, they take their lead on everything from what the New York Times, CBS, the Washington Post, ABC and NBC tell them. The AP-Hillary exercise in news manufacturing is only the overture to a symphony that will be playing from now until November, and again in 2008. And the Dems will follow in lockstep. After the New York Times editorial page endorsed Lamont, what else could the Dems do but choose him? They’ll scurry to follow orders, just as Vichy John Kerry flew home from Davos to filibuster Alito when the NYT ordered the Dems to do so…

The effect of a Lieberman purge should reverberate throughout America. A political party that cannot tolerate dissent, that cannot accept as legitimate any position that doesn’t hew to the leftmost fringe, cannot last unless its opponents fail to take advantage of its fundamental weakness. If the kiss on the cheek Lieberman got from the president proves to be the coup fatal, it could be one that produces a veto-proof Republican Senate.