Whipping Girl

Somebody should tell the Big Dog crocodiles smile too.

Arianna picks up on the delusion at the top of the DLC. Only part of it's included here. The whole post, with links, makes for very good reading.

Two things happened in the last few days that could have a lasting effect on the future direction -- and electoral success -- of the Democratic Party. One drew a ton of attention; the other, despite being far more significant, somehow fell through the mainstream media cracks.

The headline grabber was, of course, Joe "Greater Loyalties" Lieberman filing papers to form a new party called Connecticut for Lieberman, just in case this whole letting-Democratic-primary-voters-decide thing doesn't work out in August...

Lieberman's desperate move only serves to highlight what went underreported: Bill Clinton saying on Friday that Democrats (username: noreply@huffingtonpost.com/pass: huffpo) "ought to be whipped if we allow our differences over what to do now over Iraq divide us." Is he serious? He makes it sound as if the debate over the war is petty squabbling on the level of whether one should wear white after Labor Day...

If you want a better understanding of the importance of Democratic differences over the war, just look at what happened in 1968. The presidential campaign was all about the battle over how to deal with Vietnam. In the Democratic primaries, first Eugene McCarthy and then Bobby Kennedy took courageous stands against LBJ's prosecution of the war, eventually leading Johnson to announce he would not seek re-election and causing a massive rift in the party. Before RFK was gunned down following his victory in the California primary, the race was shaping up to be a showdown between the anti-war Kennedy and Vice President Humphrey, who was standing behind Johnson's handling of Vietnam.

Can you imagine someone in 1968 telling Bobby Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey that they "ought to be whipped" for fighting over their views on Vietnam?

In the end, Kennedy was assassinated, and Humphrey (backed by the party bosses) prevailed over McCarthy to win the nomination. In the general election campaign against Nixon, Humphrey continued to defend the war, alienating the Democratic base and prompting anti-war protests at almost all of his campaign appearances. Five weeks before the election, trailing Nixon badly in the polls, Humphrey finally made a speech distancing himself from Johnson and calling for an end to the U.S. bombing in Vietnam. The move turned his campaign around -- but not in time to overtake Nixon. There is speculation that if Humphrey had come out against the bombing even one week earlier, he might have prevailed.

So, 40 years later, the question becomes: will Hillary be the Humphrey of 2008?

Quite likely, if her delusions keep up:

...Elaborating on how Hillary can overcome voter uncertainty by, as the story puts it, reintroducing her values and biography to a national electorate," the anonymous advisor says: "She will define herself, and we have the money to do it.

People have to get to know her, know that she was once a Republican, that she's a big Methodist... That will happen."

So that's the winning strategy for 2008? Run Hillary as a Goldwater girl and -- wait for it -- "a big Methodist"?

That's what happens when the Big Party bucks come from Soros and therefore the Carlyle Group... who are also data mining the Democrats, too.

Just in case the NSA boys missed anything.