October 28, 2004, 9:55 a.m.
The Democrats’ Fantasy Island
Where they will be if they lose.

EDITOR'S NOTE: This article appears in the November 8, 2004, issue of National Review.

With the race tightening in the final stretch, Democrats have begun to believe — for the first time since the Boston convention — that Kerry really will win. Their spirits are rising, their "get out the illegals" drives in full swing, their lawyers primed and ready. But what if they lose again after all? Few Democrats have been prepared to discuss this awful prospect in public. That is partly for reasons of decorum and partly because Kerry may well win — and where would the pessimistic strategist be then? But there are occasional brave cases of men who will put their future where their mouth is.

Todd Gitlin, professor of journalism and sociology at Columbia University, is one such. Writing in a recent issue of The Washington Monthly, he explored what the Left would and should do after a Kerry defeat. His argument was, essentially, that left-wingers should imitate the Goldwater conservatives after 1964 and embark on a long march through the institutions of the Democratic party. "Many of the young go-for-broke voters," Gitlin said, "having failed to change the world in their first electoral outing, will be tempted to paint themselves into a gaudy Naderite corner . . . some of the far left will yield to fury, sullenness and despair. The Greens will recruit." These futile ideological gestures will make future defeats even more likely.

Others may be lured into still worse activities. Let Gitlin spell it out with the sympathetic understanding of a political ally: "I would not be surprised to see outbursts of political violence the likes of which we haven't seen since the Weather Underground of the 1970s. The commitment to marginality in much of the anti-globalization movement would take on a tang of negative logic. The master argument will go like this: What else you got, you so-called practical types?"

Well, I couldn't have put it better myself. Not being a sociologist as well as a journalist, I would never have noticed that the movement's commitment to marginality had a tang of negative logic to it. How on earth did that happen?

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