Pursuing an agenda comprised of mistakes for decades, and finally reduced to defending that agenda by means of personal slurs or rationalizing away the failures is counterproductive, not to mention intellectually dishonest. As time goes by these practices become reflexive, and ultimately drive others to ignore you.

That’s how national parties die.

Political parties are formed to achieve common goals. In a republic the people that carry the standards and seek responsibility are beholden to their constituents and face the judgement of the people every two, four, or six years.

What’s left of the elected Democrat caucus and the national party leadership is desperately attempting to maintain their positions and power. They are willfully blind to the reality that people vote their own interests – not the interests of the office holders – especially when the office holders are so starkly disconnected from the duties and responsibilities their offices are supposed to hold. That’s not opinion – that’s objective fact demonstrated by three decades of election history.

Unless all those voters are dupes, of course – which is one argument that seems to be more readily embraced and loudly repeated as the collapse of the Left in America accelarates.

You can only build so many upholstered outhouses and post offices in West Virgina. Embracing Castro, indicting America based on its material wealth, and treating people with Christian religious beliefs like mental defectives doesn’t win much ground in a nation where people remember the Cold War, the malaise of the seventies, or regularly attend church…

Only a liberal would champion a public policy that kills millions of potential constituents in the womb. There’s a lot of money in the abortion industry, but buying votes never works nationally unless you can keep the population dependent on government for subsistence.

Welfare reform and tax equity kind of put paid to that, didn’t it?

We live in interesting times.

Anonymous: Did we convince you or did you just cut and run?
…
Mike

I wonder if the issue of the Iraq war might not be as divisive if it were originally proposed as a struggle against fascism?

It was. This didn’t help. Speeches about Saddam’s tyranny, the torture of the Iraqi people, and the need to change our longterm course of supporting ME dictators for the sake of “stability” were more or less ignored by the mainstream. (Where they weren’t ignored, they were denounced because the implication was and is that overthrowing Saddam Hussein won’t be enough; he wasn’t the only “stability”-protecting dictator in the region.) When we went to the UN Security Council, and when it was necessary to emphasize an argument that body would care about, the resulting discussions of WMDs got a lot of attention; the possibilities were lurid and there was a great deal of technical detail to talk about, many experts to come forward and give their opinions, lots of file photos and film, all catnip to news producers and editors. It’s a much easier story to tell than one about the critical importance of democracy to peace. But that doesn’t mean the previous speeches and discussions didn’t happen.

None of which you did, to the contrary. Very much to the contrary.

Additionally, you make it sound as if the Michael Moores, the MoveOns, et al., have little to do with the dissenters and the arguments they forward are those invoking only the highest and the most circumspect and vaunted epistemological standards. Puhleez. The Left is seeking Tet, 1968, redux. The softer Left and a variety of pseudo or naive “liberals” are acting as little more than kowtowing, unthinking conformists within the Left’s initiatives.

Where are the millions among the Left protesting even Darfur? Where are these millions protesting Mugabe’s Zimbabwe? Where were they protesting even Rwanda? Where are they in protest of the graft and mismanagement and ineffectiveness of the UN and other trans-national presentations of moral authenticity?

Last I checked, Bush was elected. Similar results in GB and Australia as well, with the reelection of pro-war Blair and Howard. Just because the results don’t come out like you wanted them doesn’t mean these countries have become dictatorships.

Nor are those who disagree with you mindless fools who eat up everything spoonfed to them by said “dictators”.

“if anyone challenges pro-war types with facts, statistics, or metrics, then they either whine about pessimists, or revert to full McCarthyite type”

I would also submit that *some* Liberals have a tendency to “whine” and charge McCarthyism, knee-jerk style, as soon as anyone disagrees with them. Instead of say, presenting “facts, statistics, and metrics (?!)”

this anonymous wrote “Wouldn’t it be nice?” and “unthinking, unquestioned obedience to our Dear Leader..”
huh?

A display of bias and a limited exposure to information.
hey anonymous, try reading The Weekly Standard or Austin Bay or Amir Taheri or the Wall Street Journal’s op-ed pages. there has been much criticism along with huge support for the Bush admin policies and actions in Iraq and the region. Maybe you’re missing out on the information about schools opening,services being restored and new reasons for hope in Iraq, in spite of continued violence.

Some kid blogged, about how he had designed a nuclear powered car in fourth grade: he drew a box in the middle of the chassis where the reactor was, and some tubes that brought the nuclear stuff to the back wheels. He commented that he should have patented the design.

This is exactly how the Bush regime dead-enders talk about foreign policy: we’ll spread freedom, we’ll defeat the terrorists, and we’ll make the world safe for democracy. All of them good ideas and all of them objectives that I share.
However, you people have **NO IDEA** how to attain the objectives. You have no more detailed plan for pulling it off than that blogger had a detailed schematic for the plumbing of a nuclear car. It’s just fourth-grade fantasies.

“Wouldn’t it be nice?”

And of course if anyone challenges pro-war types with facts, statistics, or metrics, then they either whine about pessimists, or revert to full McCarthyite type by charging treason.

This is how dictatorships are run: with unquestioned, unthinking obedience to the Dear Leader. And this is how they run into trouble in the end, when Baghdad Bob (or “Comical Ali” as the British press called him) simply can’t own up to the mounting evidence of failure, simply can’t pierce the Dear Leader’s bubble.

Democracies are run with accountability, transparency, attention to detail, respect for facts, and constant questioning.

You want WW2 without the sacrifice and work.