Desperate Strategy

Blue Crab Boulevard blogged The Washington Post has a report on a series of speeches made yesterday by a number of Democratic party presidential hopefuls. The theme they have decided to use is, 'We have no unity, are in complete disarray, but still are much better than the Republicans who can actually unite!' At least I'm pretty sure that's what they said. Hard to decipher with all the disarray and all.

One day after suffering a pair of defeats on the Senate floor, Democratic leaders argued yesterday that their internal divisions over Iraq will help push the country toward a change in policy

Which will help turn Iraq over to the insurgents and jihadists.

and accused Republicans of blindly following President Bush on a path that

the Democratic party has been trying so hard to convince people

has been disastrous for the nation.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) said Democrats emerged from this week's Senate debate more united than critics contend around a policy aimed at forcing the new Iraqi government to take responsibility for suppressing the insurgency. Party unity is important, she said, but not as valuable as an open debate about how best to change course.

The difference between the parties on this issue is that the Republicans have figured out how to work out their differences behind the scenes and unite on the most important issues. The Democrats have not. I don't see that as a strength.

The aggressive Republican rhetoric throughout the debate caused considerable consternation among Democratic politicians and strategists. For several days, the Republicans enjoyed the upper hand in the political warfare on the Senate floor, with Democrats privately lamenting that they were losing the message battle despite what polls show is an unpopular war. By yesterday, however, Democrats were saying that the Levin proposal demonstrates party consensus and reflects public opinion more clearly than do the president's policies.

The Kerry approach is what the Angry Left Blogs want, but Clinton knows that would never get her elected. She hopes that the Levin solution would let her pretend to be a centrist, and not frighten people worried about the Islamoterrorists, and yet retain as much of her base as possible.

Democrats said Republicans have now embraced an open-ended commitment in Iraq and predicted that

they hope

the GOP will suffer at the ballot box in November unless there is a dramatic change for the better in Iraq. "They're united in a failed policy," Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) said of the Republicans on NBC's "Today" show yesterday.

It is better than being disunited between two policies that are even worse.

Biden would not answer the question of whether the Kerry-Feingold proposal for a fixed timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. troops would hurt the Democrats. "We don't agree with John Kerry," he said. "The vast majority of Democrats don't think we should set a date of a time certain."

At least the vast majority of Democrats that have to stand for election. The Angry Left Blogosphere does not agree.

But Clinton said she is not disturbed by talk of Democratic divisions. "When people say, 'Gee, the Democrats seemed not to have a unified position,' I can very straightforwardly say I'm proud of the debate that we're having," she said. "We are trying to fulfill our responsibilities, in contrast to our friends on the other side, who have abdicated theirs."

Republicans dismissed the Democratic arguments, saying leaders such as Clinton and Biden are mischaracterizing the Democrats' proposals. "People want the troops out, but they want the troops out after the success has occurred," said Republican pollster David Winston. "What the Democrats were putting forth had nothing to do with success; it was just about getting out."

Clinton, Biden and whatever gaggle of strategists/pollsters who came up with this idea of how to present the Democratic party are, once again, demonstrating the monstrous tin ear that has plagued the Democrats in recent years. The new motto should be: "We know how to bicker. They know how to win. Who would you rather have leading the team?"

That's how it sounds to the average voter, folks. Stunningly desperate strategy.