Senators John Kerry, Chuck Schumer, and Harry Reid are congratulating themselves today. Thanks in part to their unusual primary endorsement, former Reagan Navy Secretary James Webb defeated Harris Miller for the Virginia Democratic senatorial nomination Tuesday night and will challenge Republican George Allen in November. Look for a fiery antiwar campaign by Webb, a Vietnam War hero who broke ranks with the GOP over Iraq. Perhaps most interestingly, he thinks Reagan Democrats can find a place in the party of Howard Dean, declaring precociously in his victory speech that “it’s time to welcome them home.”

Just when it seemed like Tammy Duckworth might be the only seriously competitive “Fighting Dem” this year, here comes Webb to breathe unexpected life into the contrived but potentially fruitful election-year idea of running antiwar war heroes on the Democratic ticket to cover the party’s dovishness. The rebirth is ironic, since in recent months it looked like Democrats had all but given up on “Fighting Dems.”

The clearest evidence was the party’s unceremonious canning of Paul Hackett’s Senate bid in February despite his strong showing in last year’s special House election in Ohio. It wasn’t just Hackett, though: Since last year, the party has lured several military vets to declare House candidacies, only to lose interest as other prospects beckoned. Duckworth was the exception, given the possible capture of a longtime Republican Illinois House seat being vacated by the retiring Henry Hyde. The Democratic-war-hero-cum-candidate template was starting to look like a goner — until it roared back last night with James Webb.

Besides his Reagan years, Webb is probably most familiar to NRO readers as author of the acclaimed Vietnam fictionalization Fields of Fire or as writer and producer of the court-martial drama “Rules of Engagement” (2000). He is widely respected in military circles. One Marine I know, a Republican, told me Fields of Fire was the only book he brought to Iraq.

Webb is poised to run as a rare conservative Democrat, though he is yet to stake out clear positions on defining issues like abortion or judicial nominations. He leans right on affirmative action, favors No Child Left Behind, and wants border security before guest-worker programs — all attractive positions in red-state Virginia.

He is caustic in his criticism of the Bush administration’s foreign policy, however, and this is what sets him apart. His hawkish-sounding campaign slogan, “Born Fighting,” which is also the title of his nonfiction book on the Scots-Irish in America, belies more typically liberal positions. “America is fighting the wrong war in Iraq,” says a representative statement from Webb’s Internet site. “But while we entered this war recklessly, we must leave carefully. This can only be achieved when the administration clearly states that the United States has no long-term plan to occupy Iraq.”

This race was almost a disaster for the party of Howard Dean. The endorsements by top party leaders — 13 Democratic senators in total — were viewed quite justifiably as a thumb in the eye of Harris Miller. They have sowed bitter feeling. As one sign of that fact, former Lieutenant Governor Donald S. Beyer Jr. and his wife Megan, both Miller supporters, reportedly called off a fundraiser for Schumer after learning of the New York senator’s endorsement of Webb. It didn’t help that the campaign was nasty, featuring Miller’s charges of anti-Semitism against Webb and Webb’s accusations against Miller of being “the Antichrist of outsourcing.”

The endorsements look all the riskier given that late Tuesday, with an expected state turnout of three to five percent, even campaign insiders had little idea who would win. There was no reliable polling given such small turnout. Miller had outspent Webb by about 2-to-1. He could easily have taken this race. Had that happened, party leaders would have embarrassed themselves and Miller with their miscalculation.

A Harris Miller-George Allen match-up would have been great news for Republicans and for George Allen in particular. Miller stood little chance against Allen in a general election. The former president of the Information Technology Association of America admitted to wonkishness during the campaign and is too much of a down-the-line liberal to win in Virginia. That hardly soothed party loyalists faced with the Webb alternative — a recent convert who backed both Bush and Allen as recently as 2000.

But now Allen must contend with an unorthodox opponent who criticizes Iraq with a storied military biography and, for now at least, sounds conservative on social issues. This complicates whatever plans Allen had to test the presidential waters for 2008. Though still the favorite, he now must spend more time campaigning in Virginia than a less competitive race would have required.

Most intriguingly, Webb seems to think he can bring the Reagan Democrats back. In his victory speech Tuesday night, he dismissed the “old labels” of liberal and conservative and said he wanted to attract “those Democrats who left for a time.” Reagan Democrats “share the values of Andrew Jackson, Harry Truman and John F. Kennedy,” he said, and it’s time to welcome them home.

In theory, there’s little reason the many Reagan Democrats who defected beginning in the 1980s couldn’t be brought back — except for the critical issues that drove them to Republicans in the first place, like foreign policy or abortion.

There will be a temptation for Webb to rely heavily on the cachet of his military background at the expense of the policy substance he would need to accomplish this. So far, his policy statements have been quite thin. Republicans will seek to hammer him on this, making him disprove the Washington Post’s editorial judgment that “Mr. Miller is the better-briefed, better-focused and more thoughtful [candidate]. He would make the better senator.”

In his brief victory speech, Webb challenged Sen. Allen to discuss “the great issues of the day” in a series of debates. He mentioned “reshaping our national-security policy” first, then globalization, immigration, the balance of power between the White House and Congress, and government “competency.” This would be the obvious place to show that he espouses the policies of Reagan Democrats. That is, if his conversion to the party of Howard Dean does not prevent that.

For the time being, though, Webb is riding high on his military credentials. This ascendant “Fighting Dem” will make the trip quite interesting.

– Brendan Conway is an editorial writer at the Washington Times and a 2006 Phillips Foundation journalism fellow.