More Diagnosis - Peggy Noonan

More Diagnosis - Peggy Noonan reinforces what Doug Grow and Nick Coleman have been saying locally; the Democrats are beholden to a base that is not only out of step with America, it's out of step with the Democrat leadership.

The problem the Democrats have with their base is that it isn't liberal in the way the Democratic leadership in general is liberal. It is left-wing, and some parts of it are way left-wing. The last socialists are there, the warriors of race and class; there are environmentalists who want to set loggers on fire, people who think George W. Bush killed Paul Wellstone, activists whose only concern in the world is abortion rights, and people who support capital punishment for only one crime, smoking in public. Soon they will demand the death penalty for smoking in private. (Are there radicals and nuts in the Republican base? Sure. But 20 years of observation tells me there aren't as many and they don't have the same clout. Moreover, Republican candidates are somewhat protected from them. The protection comes from the media, which hate nutty right-wingers more than they dislike Republicans.)

Reporters rarely ask Democratic candidates about the price their base extracts, but it is big. The base determines primary outcomes. The base changes the shape of policy.

If the GOP has an advantage, it's that it's been able to adopt the key elements of the philosophy of its far-right wing, while Bush has been been able to neutralize the PR excesses of the likes of Falwell and Reed.

The Democrats are easily and indelibly linked with Al Sharpton, Phyllis Kahn, Kathleen Soliah, Andy Dawkins, Sandy Pappas...the list goes on.

Is there a way to neutralize them and still remain the Democrat party?

Posted by Mitch at November 8, 2002 06:19 AM