More and more Dems drink the Kool-Aid

The party of McGovern seems more and more unhinged. Loopy partisans are always out there in the wings, but they seem to be going mainstream, while the mainstream Dems go loopy. The Vince-Foster-was-murdered people never gained a central place in the party. As the American Spectator began to devote itself to Clinton conspiracy theories, it lost readership. The Left, starting with paranoid delusions of a "great right-wing conspiracy", through anguish at their failure to steal the election (a theft which they then projected on the Republicans) in Florida, through 9-11, Iraq, and Michael Moore have gone so far off the deep end, I think they are performing miracles of self-destruction.

I accept the conventional wisdom that the country was evenly divided and that the margin of undecideds was small. So my own explanation of the 11 point Bush lead is that Democratic frothing at the mouth is killing them. Some voters either vote Democratic or go fishing. More and more are staking out a spot by the lake. Some voters are undecided and are going for Bush. And non-voters may come out to support the President rather than see the party of madness and lunacy (I'm referring to Terry McAuliffe, Michael Moore, and most recently, and regrettably, Susan Estrich) gain control of the White House.

Responsible Democrats have two choices. One, they can opt for the approach taken by Randy Kelly, Ron Silver, or Ed Koch, and support the President on the issues of terror and democracy abroad while opposing him on issues like abortion or stem cell research. Two, they can lament the hate so many in their party have towards so many Republicans, and hope that once in power their leaders will be forced to adopt a more responsible policy and tone. Voting Democratic implies that you either agree with the rhetoric of the Democratic Party, or believe that they will come to their senses once they win.

I strongly believe that once a politician goes over the deep end, they are broken and cannot be put back together. Some of these people, say Gore, are so damaged by the contested election of 2000 that they can never be let near to the levers of power again. This is the central lesson of Nixon. Others were never on an even keel, and should never have been let in in the first place. These wackos are generally not politicians but activists and propagandists.
As more and more Dems cut loose their ties to responsible politics and give in to hate and venom, the party faces a longer and more profound wander in the woods. This may well be neccesary to purge the party of its madness and help the party re-invent itself. The Democrats chose not to embrace the Clintonian Third Way without Clinton. So, some new approach will have to be discovered.