It’s Howard Dean’s Party

The Democrats are in the throes of a full-fledged Vietnam flashback.

By Rich Lowry
National Review Online

Washington, D.C. — At the Winter Meeting of the Democratic National Committee, in a ballroom of the Washington Hilton packed with hundreds of Democratic activists, Rep. Rahm Emanuel seems a distant memory. Emanuel is the Chicago Democrat who masterminded the brilliant, soothingly moderate Democratic campaign of 2006 while clashing with the fire-breathing DNC Chairman Howard Dean.

If there’s one thing obvious in this room, it is that Emanuel might be clever, but it’s Howard Dean’s party. Dean electrified a similar DNC gathering four years ago when he said that he was “from the Democratic wing of the Democratic party,” and launched his antiwar candidacy briefly into the stratosphere. Now, all the Democratic presidential candidates appearing here borrow from Dean and try to appease the party’s yowling, antiwar base.

Even Hillary Clinton, who now represents the right flank of the Democratic field. She is sporadically heckled from the floor as she speaks. She desperately wants to find her footing in her antiwar party, but in a way that doesn’t damage her national-security credentials. There is a pleading quality to her antiwar lines, as if she’s saying: “Please accept this and make me go no further.”