What Was He Thinking?

What are we to make of Mr. Durbin? Just about everything about his comments comparing American troops to Nazis, Gulag guards and Pol Pot has been said.

What I find interesting is the Dick Durbin is running for President. To become President you must first get your party’s nomination and then win the election. Along the way you must raise prodigious amounts of money.

Durbin may not be the sharpest tool in the shed, but he is a Senator and therefore can be assumed to have a certain level of political cunning. From this we can assume that (1) he believes that his stance will help him get the Democratic nomination, (2) it will help him raise money and (3) it will help in the general election.

It is certainly possible that an anti-military stance will help him get the Democratic nomination. After all, it helped John Kerry who is famous for his anti-war and virulently anti-military positions during Viet Nam. Most recently, the core of the Democrats has become ever most stridently anti-military. Howard Dean almost captured the nomination based on his anti-military views. It was only a serendipitous outburst that broke his spell on the party faithful and allowed a soporific Kerry capture the prize. It is telling that as of today, no Democratic politician has condemned Durbin for his smear.

The Democrats have become the financial captives of a relatively small band of ultra-wealthy financiers and activists like George Soros, Hollywood mega-millionaires and the internet fund raising machine of MoveOn.org. This contingent could not get further left if resurrected Lenin and appointed his doppelganger as their leader. The resources of this contingent are vast and are enough to fund a national election campaign.

The question remains whether a more mean-spirited re-run of the McGovern campaign can win a national election. I believe that an increasingly radical Democrat party is losing touch with the mainstream. Part of it is due to the echo chamber effect. The MSM is still firmly in their camp and willing to cover up the Democrats’ mistakes. The problem is that the MSM is no longer the primary communication medium in the country. At this point the U.S. military has one of the highest approval ratings of any American institution. While Washington’s Democrat pols are busy reading the Washington Post and NY Times, the people are listening to talk radio and getting their information from the Internet. The pols and the people are literally on different wavelengths, and the pols don’t realize it.

Dick Durbin – or a Durbin clone – could get the Democrats’ nomination and get the same results as George McGovern. A rerun, brought to you by campaign finance reform and the last gasps of a dying media. It could not happen to a nicer bunch.