 fobbed off with vague, non-binding resolutions about withdrawal deadlines. Candidates like Hillary Clinton are finding that brawny talk about 'leaving all options on the table' (ie nuke Iran if necessary) isn't at all popular with the solid liberal base they can't afford to offend in the long march to the nomination.
By far the best performance at a recent Democratic candidates' debate organised by MSNBC was by a very distant outsider, Mike Gravel, a 77-year-old former US senator from Alaska, well-known nearly 40 years ago for his opposition to the war in Vietnam.
In a series of electrifying tirades, he flayed Clinton, Obama, Edwards and the others as two-faced on the absolute imperative of getting out of the war in Iraq and not getting into one in Iran. "They frighten me," Gravel shouted, gesturing at his rivals. "You know what's worse than one US soldier dying in vain in Iraq? It's two soldiers dying in vain. In Vietnam they all died in vain."
So the Democrats are edgy, too, though not quite so much as McCain, whose only option |
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| There isn’t a single Democrat who doesn’t believe Ralph Nader sank Al Gore in 2000 |
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is to turn on a dime and come out against the war at the end of the summer. What the Democrats fear is that a very significant number of voters are in a testy mood, ready to punish anyone - Democrat as well as Republican - who doesn't have a clear, simple plan to bring the troops back home.
So now they are openly conceding they misunderstood the public mood. But they are also aware that if they seriously tilt towards Gravel's position about the insanity of foreign interventions they will be savaged by the political establishment on every talk-show and by every political analyst in the mainstream press. So they are caught between the public mood and the imperial imperative and, most likely, the latter will prevail in their calculations and thus alienate their political base.
There's no serious third-party peace candidate yet, but the possibility of one emerging haunts both sides. Ross Perot doomed George Bush in 1992. There isn't a Democrat who doesn't believe Ralph Nader sank Al Gore in 2000. 
FIRST POSTED MAY 4, 2007
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Dispatches from Alexander Cockburn
