Dem analysts: "Don't appear too liberal"

What have I been saying since I started this blog about Democrats running from the "liberal" label as fast as an Ethiopian chicken? Sure, they want the money from the moonbat groups like MoveOn, PETA, Communist Party of America, etc., but they don't want the albatross around their neck of being labeled (accurately, I might add) "liberal."

See, your average liberal citizen generally doesn't mind being identified as such. After all, they're citizens and not politicians. However, most politicians (with only a few exceptions) are as scared of the label as David Duke and Robert Byrd at a Black Panther reunion.

But don't take my word for it...listen to Democrat analysts themselves. From the Washington comPost:

The liberals' hope that Democrats can win back the presidency by drawing sharp ideological contrasts and energizing the partisan base is a fantasy that could cripple the party's efforts to return to power, according to a new study by two prominent Democratic analysts.

In the latest shot in a long-running war over the party's direction -- an argument turned more passionate after Democrat John F. Kerry's loss to President Bush last year -- two intellectuals who have been aligned with former president Bill Clinton warn that the only way back to victory is down the center.

(snip...)

Since Kerry's defeat, some Democrats have urged that the party adopt a political strategy more like one pursued by Bush and his senior adviser, Karl Rove -- which emphasized robust turnout of the party base rather than relentless, Clinton-style tending to "swing voters."

But Galston and Kamarck, both of whom served in the Clinton White House, said there are simply not enough left-leaning voters to make this a workable strategy. In one of their more potentially controversial findings, the authors argue that the rising numbers and influence of well-educated, socially liberal voters in the Democratic Party are pulling the party further from most Americans.

On defense and social issues, "liberals espouse views diverging not only from those of other Democrats, but from Americans as a whole. To the extent that liberals now constitute both the largest bloc within the Democratic coalition and the public face of the party, Democratic candidates for national office will be running uphill."

Now here are a couple of Democrats who get it! They understand political reality 100% correctly! Liberals are in the overwhelming minority in this country. Americans simply are not liberal, and by and large, they detest liberals. Liberals are usually removed from reality when it comes to things that the average American finds important (such as national defense in a post-9/11 world), and oftentimes, they are incredibly condescending and arrogant towards the very same people they purport to court at the ballot box! Continuing:

Galston and Kamarck -- whose work was sponsored by Third Way, a group working with Senate Democrats on centrist policy ideas -- are critical of three other core liberal arguments:

· They warn against overreliance on a strategy of solving political problems by "reframing" the language by which they present their ideas, as advocated by linguist George Lakoff of the University of California at Berkeley: "The best rhetoric will fail if the public rejects the substance of a candidate's agenda or entertains doubts about his integrity."

· They say liberals who count on rising numbers of Hispanic voters fail to recognize the growing strength of the GOP among Hispanics, as well as the growing weakness of Democrats with white Catholics and married women.

· They contend that Democrats who hope the party's relative advantages on health care and education can vault them back to power "fail the test of political reality in the post-9/11 world." Security issues have become "threshold" questions for many voters, and cultural issues have become "a prism of candidates' individual character and family life," Galston and Kamarck argue.

Their basic thesis is that the number of solidly conservative Republican voters is substantially larger that the reliably Democratic liberal voter base. To win, the argument goes, Democrats must make much larger inroads among moderates than the GOP.

Bingo! Like I said, liberals are in the tiny minority, and will likely remain so for the foreseeable future. Plus, conservative citizens AND politicians usually embrace that label...liberal politicians do not.

Health care and education mean jack squat if we're all dead from a well-placed Islamofascist nuclear suitcase. Jean-Francois Kerry thought he could win with non-security issues. He was wrong.

Look, Bush was vulernable last year. I believe that a demonstrably centrist and pro-defense Democrat may have likely defeated Bush. However, the party that can't seem to do anything right chose a hippie anti-war protestor and effete elitist Northeastern liberal snob as their standard-bearer. It's like they just couldn't help themselves!

The one area where the analysis seems to come up just short is that it fails to provide a valid recommendation on how to deal with the liberal cabal attempting to overtake the Democratic Party. The analysts recognized the problem, but like most Democrats we see today, failed to propose a viable solution. Simply "don't appear too liberal" is not going to cut it.