Cursed?

BETWEEN mid-2005 and mid-2007, God loved the Democrats, tossing them treat after treat in rapid succession. Hurricane Katrina, the Iraqi implosion, the Scooter Libby conviction, and of course scandal upon riotous scandal: Jack Abramoff, Duke Cunningham, Tom DeLay, Mark Foley, Larry Craig. Then, as 2008 approached, things started to change. The surge worked, Bush outwitted his critics in the House and Senate, and the Democrats began to suffer the same tricks of fate that had heretofore crippled their foes. The stage seemed set for a moderate Democrat to win the nomination, but the party had been too loyal to its left wing in the years it was riding high. In 2006, angrier at “traitors” than at Bush and Cheney, liberal Democrats had funded a massive

assault on Joe Lieberman, whose sin was to support the war. They won in the primary, but lost when he was returned to office with support from Republicans and independents. He now classifies himself as an Independent and has become inseparable from his friend John McCain. The real victims, besides Ned Lamont, were the Democrats’ moderate presidential hopefuls, who decided resistance was futile (at least in the primaries) and bowed out. When they did, they made sure that their party’s candidate field would range from the Left to the far Left, and be dominated by politicians from the bluest states. Ever since 1964, when Lyndon Johnson swept to his post-JFK landslide, the successful Democratic presidential candidates have been governors from the South or the cultural heartland. These candidates have typically distanced themselves from the far Left, at least during their campaigns. Two leading figures of the party’s dwindling moderate faction, Evan Bayh and