The Moveon.org “Betray us” ad, the visits of Reps. Pelosi and Kucinich to Syria while it serially assassinates democratic reformers in Lebanon, the Columbia invitation to Ahmadinejad, the refusal to let Larry Summers speak at UC Davis, the Stanford protests over Donald Rumsfeld attending tasking forces at Hoover as a visiting fellow, the various Hollywood celebrities’ embraces with foreign totalitarians-all that is the sort of land mines that mainstream Democratic candidates must step around. More will pop up, since no one in the party has established what is out of bounds.
Clinton sort of did in the 1990s and so got elected without ever gaining 50% of the popular vote, and the Ike Republicans likewise did it in the 1950s by gradually marginalizing the John Birch, neo-Confederate, McCarthyite wing.
But so far none of the Democratic candidates has stepped forward to take on the explosive left, and as a result it has only become more emboldened, and before this campaign is over we will see a lot more of these self-inflicted nicks that will finally start to bleed the party.
