The Dems insult their soft and dumb base

Andrew Ferguson:

Democratic congressional aides swarmed reporters last week as their party leaders prepared to go before the television cameras and announce their ``Real Security Plan to Protect America.''

``I don't know that we've had this kind of coordinated approach before,'' one unidentified staffer proudly told the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call.

How coordinated were they? Given the near-panic among Democrats to prove that they are not, after all, a ragtag band of peaceniks and flower children, unfit for leadership in the war on terror, the possibilities seemed endless.

Would Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid appear in a loincloth streaked with animal blood? And House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi -- would she dust off that old Wagnerian Valkyrie costume from her sorority's masquerade ball and present herself to the American people as the Bay Area Brunhilde she truly is?

No such luck. At the press conference the visuals were disappointingly dull, and that unprecedented coordination showed only in the focus-group-approved lingo the two leaders used.

``Americans,'' Reid said, ``demand policies that are tough and smart.''

``Real leadership,'' Pelosi said, ``demands tough and smart policies.''

Clearly, when it comes to defending America, Democrats are unafraid to risk offending the soft and dumb.

Happy Time?

This should be a happy time for congressional Democrats. Elections this fall offer them the real, though still distant, possibility of taking control of one or even both houses of Congress.

The key to the Democrats' possible change in fortune is national security. In 2002, Republicans used Democratic weakness on the issue to recapture the U.S. Senate. Democrats, in response, turned martial. In 2004, they chose a decorated Vietnam veteran as their presidential candidate and nominated him at a flag-festooned convention that might have been an American Legion meeting -- or a rehearsal for a Latin American coup.

The faux militarism didn't take, of course, and once again, according to exit polls, the Democrats' perceived weakness on national security gave Republicans the edge.

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On come on Dems it really is not that hard. Support the war on terror, which inculdes the war in Iraq.