The Democrats’ Rage

The Weekly Standard has an interesting piece on the rise of Howard Dean and the psychnology of the Democratic Party. Dean has captured the base of the Democratic Party where none of the other candidates has. Dean has essentially tapped into a long-simmering attitude with the Democrats.

The Democrats hate George W. Bush. It’s not that they just disagree with him and his policies. It’s that they despise him personally. You’d get more kind words from the left about Adolph Hitler from the left than you would for George W. Bush.

Part of it stems from the increasing radicalism of the left coming from the American political realignment towards the GOP. Another part stems from the 2000 election in which the Democrats felt that Bush "stole" the election. As Caldwell states:

Those Democrats who dismiss Dean as unelectable are making an assessment of what non-Democratic voters think, and this is a subject on which Democrats have been driven into a frenzy of illogic by their dislike of George W. Bush. The current self-serving self-delusion–one reads it in "Doonesbury" and hears it from Nancy Pelosi and a variety of marginal commentators and celebrity know-nothings–is that Republicans have succeeded because their message is stupid and simple and dishonest; and Democrats have failed because they’re so subtle and principled. Under this logic, Democrats will do best by nominating a malevolent sleazeball and getting him to shout at the top of his lungs. Suffice it to say that this logic is identical to that upon which Republicans built a string of defeats in the Clinton years.

Indeed, if one reads Atrios or Hesiod one would think that the GOP is actively trying to send the poor, the elderly, and minorities into prison camp. For anyone who isn’t a hard-core Democrat, such an attitude is not only off-putting, it’s downright scary. These people aren’t out to persuade anyone, they’re out to fight a secular holy war.

However, Caldwell argues that despite all this, it’s not prudent to write off Dean quite yet:

But there is no concrete political reason why Dean should be less electable than any of his rivals. People forget that "electability" used to be a synonym for "large advertising budget." Dean has the latter; therefore he has the former. Those who wonder whether his issue appeal is broad enough forget how far John McCain got attacking on a far narrower front.

At the same time, Dean’s budget isn’t near to the GOP funding juggernaut, despite his pioneering use of Internet fundraising. Furthermore, a big war chest isn’t the sole factor in an election. If your candidate just doesn’t click with the electorate, money is only cosmetic, and you’re going to be spending far more on defense than on message.

At the end of the day, Dean is going to have to come up with the answer to this question: "Why should you be President". The answer "Because George W. Bush is evil, a tyrant, etc…" won’t work. Even with Bush’s ratings slide, half the electorate is going to think you’re a nut for making the argument, and that does nothing to answer the question. Unfortunately, for Dean to start making himself palatable to the general electorate, he simply can’t do nothing but bash Bush at every turn. He’s going to have to define himself. However, one he does that he looses the biggest reason why the Democratic base loves him. In essence, Dean is stuck in a political Catch-22 – he can either keep his current stategy and play to the base and lose the general election, or he can embrace his more moderate roots and lose the base and possibly a lot of the steam that’s powering his rise. For any political candidate, that’s a difficult path, and especially for a Democrat that has to deal with a fractured minority party.

However, Caldwell is exactly on the mark with this prediction for 2004:

As for the general election, Republicans seem unaware of how riled up Democratic activists remain, even three years after the 2000 elections. A substantial segment of the party’s base has been radicalized to the point where it does not recognize the legitimacy of the Bush presidency. This is a very different thing than mere dislike of a president. It means that Democrats are prepared to fight this election as if they were struggling to overthrow a tyrant. One fears that 2004 could wind up–in its rhetoric and its electoral ethics–as the dirtiest general election campaign in living memory. It is not a condemnation of Dean to say that his rise provides another piece of evidence that this fear is well founded.

Indeed, despite the Democrat’s cries that they are the saintly and noble of the two parties, this election is going to be dirtier than any one in modern American political history.