The Democratic Party apparently has no higher or more urgent purpose in 2004 than to protest and repudiate this exceedingly just war. One sees all this and concludes, regretfully, that it is time to declare the latter-day Democratic Party dead to its legacy. Happy warriors such as Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy, and Hubert Humphrey would not recognize today's Democratic Party—which has turned its back on the muscular defense of America and the promotion of democratic principles abroad. Henry "Scoop" Jackson would recognize this party, alas, as the McGovernite aberration he fought so hard against in the 1970s.

The liberation of Iraq—and the attendant war on terrorism—is the most crucial issue facing this country, and, indeed, the world. Democrats today don't recognize that. They don't get it. Byron York of The Hill was one of the few reporters who seized on a little-noticed survey sponsored by Stanley Greenberg's and James Carville's Democracy Corps last October:

In Iowa, 1 percent of those polled—1 percent!—said they worried about fighting terrorism. It was dead last on the list. Two percent said they worried about homeland security—next to last. In New Hampshire, 2 percent worried about fighting terrorism and 2 percent worried about homeland security.In South Carolina—somewhat surprising because of its military heritage—the results were the same.
In a recent interview on "60 Minutes," John Kerry rattled off his check-list of issues in the coming election:

I disagree with President Bush on, number one, his economic policy, which is driving the country into debt and not creating jobs, giving tax cuts to wealthy Americans at the expense of the average American; the energy bill which has been transformed into $50 billion of oil and gas subsidies. Almost every policy in the environment is going backwards. I disagree with his approach to health care, which is no approach at all, and I disagree deeply, profoundly, with the way he is conducting his war on terror that is breaking our relationships around the planet, isolating the United States. That's what I disagree with, for starters.
The war ranked last. After the first Super Tuesday, York revealed, again, that "Democratic voters placed national security/terrorism at the bottom of the list" of concerns. Furthermore, York pointed out that John Edwards's most famous stump speech, "Two Americas," mentioned terrorism not at all. Edwards, even when he was the last credible challenger to Kerry, practically ignored the war, as if it did not exist.

Why is this? Why has the Democratic Party sunk into the depths of a leftist pacifism that shuns confrontation with cruel despots and Islamo-fascists? To this day, I do not fully comprehend the reasons. The Democratic Party I grew up in (and belonged to for 23 years) was the same party my fellow erstwhile Democrat Jeane Kirkpatrick invoked when she spoke at her first Republican convention, in 1984. She began by quoting Harry Truman on "the dignity of man." And then she said that the leaders of her Democratic Party were men who

[D]eveloped NATO, who developed the Marshall Plan, who devised the Alliance for Progress. They were not afraid to be resolute nor ashamed to speak of America as a great nation. They didn't doubt that we must be strong enough to protect ourselves and to help others. They didn't imagine that America should depend for its very survival on the promises of its adversaries. They happily assumed the responsibilities of freedom.
Kirkpatrick lamented that the Democratic Party at that moment, in its desperation to beat Ronald Reagan, was sinking into a position of "always blaming America first," condemning not the Communists nor the terrorists who struck at us then, but America and her policies. Ambassador Kirkpatrick was on to something, especially as she concluded: "The American people know that it's dangerous to blame ourselves for terrible problems that we did not cause."

The Democratic Party did not represent American sentiment then—and it went on to lose 49 states. I wonder if it represents more of the American people now.