Ken Bode: Send Clear Message or Relive McGovern Moment

[Felix Mala]

NORTH CANAAN, Conn. -- The voters I found in this small, western Connecticut town looked deceptively ordinary. When the results were in, the answer was obvious: Lamont thumped Lieberman 2-to-1 in North Canaan.

I insist these folks all looked like ordinary citizens. Neither at the polling place nor at the two local pubs, Stepping Stone and Katie O'Casey's, did I find among the Lamont voters anything like the cunning, insidious crowd others discovered in their analyses of the election.

These voters, I learned from columnist Charles Krauthammer, were part of the "blame America first Democrats," naïve accommodationists who are now planning to purge the party of its hawkish elements." Matthew Continetti of The Weekly Standard told of finding Lamont activists who were "suspicious of orthodox or evangelical religion, harboring a curious fetishization of science and technology, with a habit of self-affirmation."

Reading Kathleen Parker's column, I learned that I'd been gulled by these clever North Canaanites. Parker reports that Lamont voters are part of the "Stalinist" wing of the Democratic Party. I insist these folks all looked like ordinary citizens.

Following the talking points from Karl Rove, the right-wing commentary is filled with charges that the McGovernite wing of the Democratic Party is now ascendant. In turn, the party's leadership promises that, this time, they are not going to allow themselves to be "Swift boated" on national security, as John Kerry was in 2004.

Actually the Swift boating began long before the term entered the political lexicon. In 1968, remember, Richard Nixon ran on a secret plan to end the Vietnam War, and America bought the promise. Four years later, there was no end in sight. George McGovern's anti-war message, with a promise to end the bombing on Inauguration Day, won him the nomination. He also stood for a Congress that reasserts its power to declare war and a war profits tax, good ideas even today. He didn't try to purge anyone. Indeed the McGovern campaign was completely inclusive, reaching out to the Henry Jackson-George Meany wing of the party, which had labeled him the candidate of abortion, acid and amnesty.

McGovern was a bona fide war hero, the pilot of 35 missions over Europe in the Dakota Queen, a B-24 Liberator bomber. With the acquiescence of right wingers in the Democratic Party, Nixon portrayed McGovern as weak on defense, a cringing apostle of appeasement. Only days before the election, Henry Kissinger falsely pronounced that peace was at hand, and the resulting McGovern landslide loss contributed to his name being invoked as a symbol of failure.
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Read the entire column at
http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060818/OPINION/608180388/1002


In a nutshell, this is what the game is all about, folks. Why do we keep letting the losing and the losers set the national agenda, fighting on terms of their choosing?

Too bad this column doesn't get wider distribution. We in Indiana benefit from a former NBC reporter retiring to one of our quaint college towns.

[yurbud]

1. good points. Dems need to do what GOP has done in terms of communication

buy the microphone.