Democrats tilt to the left in Presidential race

Donald Lambro:

The Democratic presidential lineup tilted more to the left when former Virginia governor Mark Warner and Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh dropped out of the race for the 2008 nomination, party strategists say.
Both men were prominent advocates for a centrist Democratic agenda on national security and domestic policies. Their withdrawal from a dozen declared and potential candidates left behind a field of almost all liberal contenders for an office Democrats have won in only five out of the last 14 presidential elections.
The result "could mean a more left-leaning field" of Democrats heading into the 2008 primary contests that will allow liberal candidates to use the rhetoric of moderation without embracing centrist policies themselves, said former Democratic congressman Tim Penny of Minnesota.
"If you don't have a genuine moderate in the race, it allows liberal candidates to put on the mask of moderation, because there's no certified moderate to compare their rhetoric to reality," said Mr. Penny, a party strategist and a senior fellow at the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute at the University of Minnesota.
Mr. Warner, a pro-business Democrat who was hawkish on defense issues, and Mr. Bayh, who served two terms as governor in a heavily Republican state and has chaired the centrist-leaning Democratic Leadership Council, found little support for their brand of politics in a party of liberal superstars such as Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, the early front-runner, and Barack Obama of Illinois, who is running just behind her in the polls.
"Without them in the race, it leaves us without diversity on the campaign trail. That also leaves us in a circumstance where the remaining candidates will be more liberal than the mainstream voters and will not be challenged as aggressively as if Bayh or Warner were in the race," Mr. Penny said.
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That is what the MoveOn-Koskid caucus has been pushing for. They want the Democrats to be leftist unapologetically. Bayh had already moved to the left in positioning himself for the race. If you look at his voting record in the last two years it tended to tilt left more than at any other time in his career. Right now Obama seems to be the vessel for most of the hopes of seveal factions in the Democrat party, but I expect that Clinton will make him reveal his true positions on the issues which put him to the left of even her.