Andrew Sullivan sees the Democrats as blowing it on the war issue:
The Democrats, alas, seem hopeless to me. Their ambivalence about the war before and during it makes them seem unreliable stewards of a fight we have no choice but to join. Their flirtation with withdrawal only reinforces this impression. But they do have an opening, if they only had the conviction. If a Democratic candidate emerged who promised to stick to the Iraq war to victory, but conduct it in a more aggresive, ethical and competent way than the current crew, Americans would be more than receptive. Such a position would also help them expose the scandalous incompetence in the White House, while not being vulnerable to charges of defeatism. It won’t happen, alas. And Rove will ruthlessly exploit the war for partisan gain, as he has from the beginning. He has no scruples. For him, national security is simply part of a political game. I should therefore break the news to my liberal and Democratic readers: Rove is winning this game for now. If you stick to your anti-war position, you are left with hoping for catastrophe, which a great political party should be better than. Until the Democrats confront this, the rest of us are left with the hope of McCain – but not much else.
The other part of it is that the same kind of vilification (which we decry here) of Democrats and others who question the war is being practiced by some Democrats on Democrats and others who either totally or partially support the war. In other words, the current Democratic Party’s trend seems to be towards adopting George W. Bush’s “you’re either with us or against us.” Go for those in your choir and forget about other potential choir members.
Part of the problem is that there used to be a time when politicians attempted to reach a vital goal by aggregating (versus aggravating) interests — skillfully piecing together a coalition so that a given side then has broad-based power to achieve a critical goal.
Just as Republicans seem to opt more now for simply mobilizing their party base, many Democrats have also decided that it’s best to talk to and mobilize (and in the case of blogs and some readers, only read) those that you already totally agree with.
So who will those OTHER potential allies go with — particularly if they are being demonized if they do not agree with every single stance of those Democrats who want an immediate pullout?
You get a sense — seeing how quickly Rove (literally within hours of the news coming out that he was not going to be indicted) has used the war issue to go on the offensive against the Democrats — that the Democratic Party is about to grab defeat from the jaws of victory (again). Oops! If the Democrats keep this up they could win a moral victory on Election Day.
Coalitions. Winning over large numbers of people. Trying to convince people who might be your allies to join with you. It all now seems oh so 20th-Century (except when the ballots are counted and you do a post-mortem and say we shoulda, we coulda..).
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.