Charley Brown and the Football

John McIntire at RealClearPolitics.com thinks the Dems have walked into a trap...again:

Not recognizing the political ground had shifted beneath their feet, Democrats continued to press forward with their offensive against the President. They've now foolishly climbed out on a limb that Rove and Bush have the real potential to chop off. One would think that after the political miscalculations the Democrats made during the 2002 and 2004 campaigns they would not make the same mistake a third time, but it is beginning to look a lot like Charlie Brown and the football again.

First, the Democrats still do not grasp that foreign affairs and national security issues are their vulnerabilities, not their strengths. All of the drumbeat about Iraq, spying, and torture that the left thinks is so damaging to the White House are actually positives for the President and Republicans. Apparently, Democrats still have not fully grasped that the public has profound and long-standing concerns about their ability to defend the nation. As long as national security related issues are front page news, the Democrats are operating at a structural political disadvantage. Perhaps the intensity of their left wing base and the overwhelmingly liberal press corps produces a disorientation among Democratic politicians and prevents a more realistic analysis of where the country's true pulse lies on these issues.

With their publicly defeatist language, John Murtha, Nancy Pelosi and Howard Dean reinforce these "soft on security" stereotypes, a weakness that more sober-minded Democrats have been trying to mitigate since the late 60's and 70's. Unfortunately, this mentality dominates the Democrats' political base and more accurately represents where the heart and soul of the modern Democratic party lies than the very tiny sliver of Joe Lieberman Democrats. The Party of FDR, Truman and John Kennedy -- at least on foreign policy -- is clearly no more.

The Dems certainly have not seemed to learn the lesson about the risk of appearing soft on defense, and when you add defeatist to the mix, you're just asking voters to turn away. The problem as I (and John) see it is that their political and money base is all screaming for withdrawal and "Impeach Bush" and other nonsense, and they're simply afraid to go against the folks who are paying the bills. Look what's happened to Joe Lieberman, anlesser lessor extent, Hillary Clinton, after they continued to support the war.

A strong turnaround in Iraq between now and the elections in 2006 could easily spell doom for any Dem hopes to gain ground in Congress or win back the White House in '08. They simply won't be seen as trustworthy.