No Agenda but Hate

The Democrats have been trying to hold back on their Bush-bashing during the DNC, though at this point it seems, unsuccessfully. The reason for this is that aside from their hatred of Bush, they really have no agenda or party unity. This hatred of Bush, however, is not matched by any passion for their own candidate. As David Frum points out, the party is full of internal contradictions.

Today's Democratic Party is the party of America's most politically radical people and also its most politically conservative: the party of the anti-globalisation, bicycle-courier Left, and also of the retired generals, diplomats and oil executives who sign petitions denouncing Mr Bush's rejection of five decades' worth of inherited wisdom on the Middle East.

Today's Democratic Party is the party both of America's freest traders (such as Robert Rubin) and its fiercest protectionists (such as Richard Gephardt); of the ultra-secularists of Harvard, Columbia, and Berkeley and of fervently devout African-American churchgoers; of America's staunchest Zionists (such as Joe Lieberman) and its most conspiracy-minded anti-Semites.

Finally, today's Democratic Party is the party both of those who object to Mr Bush's foreign policy on principle (such as Richard Holbrooke, one of the two front-runners for the job of next Democratic secretary of state) and those who object only to its allegedly ham-handed execution (such as Delaware Senator Joe Biden, who is the other).

These incompatible groups all passionately dislike Mr Bush. But that dislike is not matched by any corresponding passion in favour of John Kerry.

Tony Blankley, meanwhile, thinks that the divisions that this hatred obscure, will do more damage to the Democratic Party if Kerry is actually elected, than if he loses.

The result is a hatred of Mr. Bush by the party activists that has consumed their policy passions and convictions. They hate Mr. Bush more than they hate the Iraq war. Their great intellectual battle of the 2000s — whether they should stay in the Clinton center or go back to their liberal convictions — has been subsumed temporarily by their common hatred of Mr. Bush. Should the American voters succumb to poor judgment and elect Mr. Kerry, a united Democratic Party may face the plight of the son in the Nazi story of hate and meaning. Bush hate is the glue that holds the party together. If he leaves the scene, the party may quickly fall apart.