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The LA Times today described John Kerry's "stark new challenge": "As President Bush has moved toward his position, the Democratic Party is moving away from it."
'The Democratic Party' is here used to mean the entire liberal voting base in the United States, many of whom, of course, don't consider themselves Democrats. And though a small number of prominent thinkers aligned with the Party have advocated setting a firm date for withdrawal, it's not the Party establishment that is moving away from Kerry. Most of them want Kerry to keep his policy pronouncements vague, and certainly not endorse a stance that will open him up to charges of 'flip-flopping' on the issue of the day.
As the Times story goes on to explain, it's the base that's getting ansy. "As Kerry begins an 11-day focus on national security with a speech in Seattle today, his shrinking differences with Bush over Iraq could revive the problem that plagued him during the Democratic primaries: conflict with his party base over the war." 53% of Democratic voters said the U.S. "should withdraw its military forces from Iraq ... even if that means civil order is not restored there" in an ABC/Washington Post survey released Monday. Nader's campaign has found a raison d'etre in his antiwar stance (and it's showing in polls), and more important, the influence of our activism is showing itself:
The withdrawal idea is certain to receive more attention now that Win Without War, whose members include the influential liberal Internet advocacy group, MoveOn.org, has endorsed it after extensive deliberations.
Remember that even by 1968, not one of 39 major U.S. daily newspapers surveyed by the Boston Globe had ran editorials advocating U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam. Now, just a year after the Iraq war, a faultline may be forming in the Democratic Party. Events may be aligning that give activists a ripe opporunity to push Kerry to the only sensible Iraq policy: the total withdrawal of American military forces.