The Democrats are in a pickle and their inability to build any kind of political capital while George Bush's poll numbers sag is evidence of their predicament. The problem is the true believers on the far left of the party, which is, of course, a sizable segment of the Democratic population.
These folk - the Michael Moore, Ted Kennedy, Barbara Boxer, and George Soros types - are indispensible to the Democrats because they have money and the ability to turn out the party's base, i.e. the uneducated urban poor and the rich, effete narcissists in the media and entertainment industries. If the party ignores these radicals to the point where they feel they've been thrown overboard, the party is doomed.
On the other hand the left's vitriolic, anti-Bush, show-no-quarter rhetoric, and their extremist positions on almost every issue are distasteful and unpopular with much of the electorate. The port-side of the Democratic party comes across as strongly anti-American and resolutely anti-common sense. Such positions are sure-fire winners only in Berkeley and Hollywood and the salons of Manhatten and Georgetown.
Thus if the party caters to the left it dooms itself as well. Thus what moderates there are among Democrats seem to be trying to navigate between Charybdis and Scylla. They can't afford to dismiss the left and they can't afford to appease them either.
Hillary is no moderate, but she's trying hard to walk this tightrope. The left believes that she's really one of them and that gives her some wiggle room to say things that sound moderate because the lefties know she doesn't really believe what she's saying. Other Democrats will be doing the same thing as the elections approach. Look for Democrats to take a firm stand against illegal aliens and to sound hawkish on Iraq while at the same time vaguely endorsing imminent withdrawal.
These politicos, by affecting a Kerryesque slipperiness, will succeed only in alienating voters fed up with candidates who have no strong principles they're unwilling to compromise upon. They really have little alternative, however, given the ideological dynamics of their party.
