Do these names sound familiar to some of our more “mature” Democrats: MUSKIE, McGOVERN, GARY HART,and McCARTHY? Then you might well recall how these Democratic Candidates for President shot each other down.
The newest installment of Democratic ritual suicide, otherwise known as the 2008 camgaign, is something special: It’s not just the protracted and painful nomination struggle between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton which repeats all the classic themes of intra-Democratic conflict – left vs. center, reformer vs. the Establishment, pragmatist vs. idealist. Call it what you will but this struggle can lead to Democratic ritual suicide.
Democrats have never been asked to choose quite so nakedly which absolutely necessary demographic they would like to do without. Here is the question, a cynic might suggest, that the Democratic Party must answer this summer: Do we want to lose because we drove away blacks or because we drove away white women? (Recent polling data suggests another cynical question: Do we prefer the candidate Americans believe is a liar or the one they believe is a Muslim?)
Whoever the Democrats nominate will not be facing a popular incumbent but an awkward Republican nominee who has embraced an unpopular war and remains unloved by his own party’s base.
The party is caught in an excruciating Catch-22. Whether it chooses the establishment figure or the liberal reformer, history offers many paths to defeat.