At least President Bush has the guts to brush off his entire Republican base in rejecting our concerns about his immigration bill.
Democratic presidential candidates in debate have no such luxury, as Michael Graham reports.
They've got to be against the war to satisfy the nutroots. Yet they can't help looking over their shoulders at their eventual rendezvous with the general election voters in November 2008.
The more the first-tier candidates talked last night, the more it became apparent they were struggling to reach out to the crazies without becoming crazy themselves. Clinton, Obama and Edwards had no answer to the Kucinich challenge (If the war is really immoral, how can you continue to fund it?), so they blathered nonsense about who was really against the war first.
They also probably understand that when they ascend the rostrum in January 2009 they will still have a war on terror to fight. So they blather on hoping for the best.
Senator Clinton, of course, has another important goal. She needs to dispel her image as a shrill, divisive partisan.
Sen. Clinton was her usual, professional self: prepared, pleasant, generous. She knows her greatest challenge is her image, and she took every opportunity to appear friendly and collegial.
It’s a pity that when she’s on the stump she can’t think of anything better than tired sound bites about President Bush’s “on your own” society against her glorious vision of a “we’re all in it together” society.
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