But are the Democrats helping themselves?

The Baseball Crank is discussing How To Make People Not Care About Torture.

But when you call American soldiers Nazis and call Guantanamo the gulag - as it sits just miles from actual gulags - you cheapen the meaning of "Nazi" and "gulag". And when you call the interrogation methods that have been approved by the Pentagon "torture," you cheapen the meaning of torture. And you end up devaluing your own words to the point where they flow over the listener like so much rainwater.

Plus, you wind up driving away people who might be tempted to listen to you.

But the Democrats can't see that.

Or won't see it, which is, I think, the more likely case. I believe that they're convinced that they need to keep their base happy to have any chance of winning elections again. And they think that their base is represented by the people that frequent Kos and the Democratic Underground.

So they end up saying incredibly stupid things, like Senator Durbin did. And they're stuck defending them because that fringe will go nuts, rant, rave, scream and shout, if Durbin acknowledges that his remarks might have been just a bit intemperate. So they seem to be trapped, required to behave in a manner that almost certainly guarantees further electoral damage.

Which is not to say that they cannot win again. 2008 will be 7 years after 9/11. If there's not been another attack by then, if Iraq is functioning reasonably well (meaning that soldiers aren't getting blown up, so it isn't in the news monthly, never mind weekly or daily), then it's not at all unreasonable to suspect that US voters are very capable of taking the same "vacation from history" that they took in 1992. One of the greatest strengths that the Republicans have is that voters recognize that they're serious about the defense of the nation* and the Democrats are not. But if it looks like defense isn't a top priority, Democrats are very capable of winning national elections again.



* - Illegal immigration, unfortunately, is something that neither party has demonstrated ANY seriousness about. There are probably more Republicans than Democrats who are working on it, but the big picture view of both parties is that neither is willing to do anything to stop, or even slow down, the illegals entering the US...