The Coming Battle for the Democratic Party

It's a long way off until the Pennsylvania primary, but if this week's left-wing handwringing is any sign of things to come, the Democratic Party's truly going to tear itself to pieces in the interim.

Andrew Sullivan's got a big crush on Barack Obama, but I still think he nails some of the basic fundamentals of the Clinton campaign's Machiavellianism:

The new meme is that politics has returned to normal and that this election will now be run by Clinton rules. Many are relieved by this. You could sense the palpable discomfort among many in Washington that their world might actually shift a little next year. But if elections are primarily about fear and mud, and who best operates in a street fight, Beltway comfort returns. This we know. This we understand. This we already have the language to describe. And, the feeling goes, the Clintons can win back the White House in this atmosphere. What she is doing to Obama she can try to do to McCain. Maybe Limbaugh will help her out again.

What I think this misses are the cultural and social consequences of beating Obama (or McCain) this way. I don't mean beating Obama because the Clintons' message is more persuasive, or because the Clintons' healthcare plan is better, or because she has a better approach to Iraq. I mean: beating him by a barrage of petty attacks, by impugning his clear ability to be commander-in-chief, by toying with questions about his "Muslim past", by subtle invocation of the race card, by intermittent reliance on gender identity politics, by taking faux offense to keep the news cycle busy ("shame on you, Barack Obama!") and so on. If the Clintons beat Obama this way, I have a simple prediction. It will mean a mass flight from the process. It will alter the political consciousness of an entire generation of young voters - against any positive interaction with the political process for the foreseeable future. I'm not sure that Washington yet understands the risk the Clintons are taking with their own party and the future of American politics.

The reason so many people have re-engaged with politics this year is because many sense their country is in a desperate state and because only one candidate has articulated a vision and a politics big enough to address it without dividing the country down the middle again. For the first time in decades, a candidate has emerged who seems able to address the country's and the world's needs with a message that does not rely on Clintonian parsing or Rovian sleaze. For the first time since the 1960s, we have a potential president able to transcend the victim-mongering identity politics so skillfully used by the Clintons. If this promise is eclipsed because the old political system conspires to strangle it at birth, the reaction from the new influx of voters will be severe. The Clintons will all but guarantee they will lose a hefty amount of it in the fall, as they richly deserve to. Some will gravitate to McCain; others will be so disillusioned they will withdraw from politics for another generation. If the Clintons grind up and kill the most promising young leader since Kennedy, and if they do it not on the strength of their arguments, but by the kind of politics we have seen them deploy, the backlash will be deep and severe and long. As it should be.

Unfortunately for Sullivan, he's naive to think what the Clintons are doing is anything new. I mean, hello! Does the name Tom Delay ring a bell? Ever heard of Jesse Helms? Shoot, you'd think slash-and-burn politics was as new as the latest envelope laptop sleeve.

No, Hillary Clinton's doing exactly what she should be doing: Fighting to the finish against a candidate of which she's eminently more qualified. If Obama lets himself get beat up by the Clintonian old-guard, you have to wonder how really talented a politician he is.

But what to think, in any case. Are these good developments?

Perhaps not. Certainly Obama's captured the hopes and sentiment of a new generation of Americans, and I think the upsurge of youth mobilization is geniune and potentially long-lasting. Yet, should Obama be essentially robbed the party's nomination by extra-instituational means (leveraging-in Michigan and Florida delegates, browbeating the party elite to shift superdelegate ballots), then yes, we could be in for some severe political conflict, and not necessarily on the convention floor.

Remember my post from this morning, "Riots in Denver? Radicals May Seek "Direct Action" Against Democrats"?

Well if you check the links there you'll find the Rick Pearlstein's entry at Huffington Post. Pearlstein argues that some lefties are plotting a bit of serious unconventional particpation for Denver in August. Some leftist Iraq veterans are looking to provide operations intelligence to the radicals' game plan of political mayhem. But read the comments to the post, where you can see a real battle developing between members of the Democratic Party's old guard and those who would seek to rescue the party through revolutionary direct action:

Oh I see. So we're being threatened with violence if the voters continute speak out for Hillary? Is that how it goes? We're supposed to be afraid of thugs now? Get off your high horses and stop deluding yourself into believeing that this is the freakin' American Revoltion. It's not. It's a bunch of people raised on video game and movie violence, who just registered to vote, and think they know what America needs.

Your candidate is a fraud. Plain and simple. You're all willing to go to jail or die for a guy that gets his words from a middle-aged white media consultant. Yeah, that's really revolutionary. These nutjob comments that are featured here are not the only ones out there.. they're multiplying all over the internet. I'm sorry, but I have a hard time thinking these people are so devoted to democracy as to threaten violence to get their weak candidate in office.

Movement? Yeah, right. It's be so impressive to hear these 'give me obama or give me death' types if he actually stood for something. Which he does not. I think that the Obama supporters that were caught on tape screaming at people during the caucuses, and the threats by these thugs, are only going to guarantee that NO ONE will vote for him even if you manage to strongarm the nomination. He can't win the General Election with a handful of his little army (or whatever the hell you call yourselves now.) You can kiss even the slightest bit moderate voter behind.

We will not be intimidated. You're underestimating the Super Delegates and the voters, and America. Obama needs to rein his supporters in, pronto.

This is a true internecine battle erupting, and the stakes entail the very future of the Democratic Party. Andrew Sullivan knows this, of course, so look for more Obama victimology posts that serve mostly to further embolden those young Seattle-style youths hoping to revive the 1960s.