WHY DEMOCRATS ARE ALL BOXED IN!!

Newsweek ^ | 11/23/03 | Joe Klein

[Elkiejg]

We have reached a moment of transcendent weirdness in American politics and perhaps a defining moment in the 2004 presidential campaign. In Washington last week, Newt Gingrich and the aarp—who battled each other over old-age entitlement spending in the 1990s—joined the White House in support of a new $400 billion Medicare prescription-drug benefit. Odder still, the Wall Street Journal's ultraconservative editorial page opposed the bill, as did ultraliberal House leader Nancy Pelosi, Ted Kennedy and most of the Democrats running for President. This, after a decade of Democrats pleading for just such a benefit and lambasting Republicans for blocking it. This, in the same week that Tom Daschle and George Bush joined forces to support the fetid enormity of a $31 billion energy bill, which was quickly dubbed the Hooters and Polluters Bill, since it funded, among many other things, construction of an energy-efficient Hooters restaurant in Shreveport, La. This, in the same week that Massachusetts moved toward legalization of gay marriage.

Confused? Overwhelmed? Appalled? Yes, yes and yes. This was an awful week for the Democrats, who are likely to lose— politically—on all fronts. And it was a shameful week—substantively—for the Bush Administration.

The political equation is obvious. The President will be able to say the Democrats opposed prescription drugs for the elderly whether the Medicare bill passes or not (just as he campaigned in 2002 saying the Democrats blocked Homeland Security because they wanted labor-protection provisions in the bill). The same is true, to a lesser extent, of the energy bill, which Senators of both parties managed to stop, perhaps temporarily, last Friday.

The President can still say, "We proposed energy 'reform'; the Dems opposed."

Not many Americans will scour the fine print. As for gay marriage, my guess is that Bush will remain above the fray. The issue is too raw—and his Vice President has taken the same position as most Democrats have. But Bush will benefit nonetheless from the anguish and agitation on the religious right, which will use the ruling to invigorate turnout among Christian conservatives.

[CFC__VRWC]

The Democratic Party, I predict, will dwindle to marginal status in the next decade.

Homosexuality and Trade Unionism are the core issues they are passionate about.

You can't discuss core Democratic Party issues without mentioning the most important one for them - Abortion. Unrestricted abortion on demand, stripped of all the emotional baggage that traditional American society placed upon it, was the original linchpin for the totally hedonistic, standard-less, anarchic society liberals seek. The rise of homosexuality as a comparable linchpin is a relatively recent occurence.