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Democratic Party Leaders Refuse To Turn Left.

From the SF Chronicle comes this interesting news:

"Democratic Party stalwarts intent on producing a party platform with broad appeal turned aside one attempt after another Saturday to move the presidential campaign document -- and the party -- leftward.

The party's Platform Committee approved a document, 16 days before the Democratic National Convention in Boston, that walks away from proposed language calling the war in Iraq a mistake and seeking a specific date for the withdrawal of U.S. forces."

The article goes on to state that:

"They (Democratic party leaders) began the day facing 207 amendments to a draft platform completed a week ago. Nearly every amendment was withdrawn or incorporated in modified language accepted by Kerry's representatives and other party leaders. For example, a proposal to denounce key elements of the Patriot Act, the foundation of the Bush administration's domestic crusade against terrorism, was rejected."

And all this time I thought supporters of the Democratic hopeful were trying to convince us that the Kerry campaign is all about being opposed to the horrific, extra-judicial war on Iraq that has resulted in the senseless slaughter of the Iraqi people at the hands of a shameless, colony-seeking dictatorial Republican regime. I guess it's true: Being a Democrat doesn't mean you have to have your head up your ass when it comes to national security issues. I guess nobody bothered to send Michael Moore the memo.

Update (7:29 PM, PST) Kerry, in a 60 Minutes interview, has just told Leslie Stahl that ""I think the president made a mistake in the way he took us to war. I am against the war - the way the president went to war was wrong." I'm having a little trouble with all of this. It's one thing to disagree with the way our current administration brought us into the war in Iraq. It is quite another to state unequivocably, as Kerry did to Stahl, that he is against the war, while those drafting Kerry's platform back away from language stating that the war in Iraq is a mistake. Is it, or isn't it?

Later in the interview we hear this: "I know you want to make this black and white, but the difference is - if John Kerry were president of the United States, we would never be in this place," adds Edwards. "He would never have done what George Bush did. He would have done the hard work to build the alliances and the support system."

"Why build an alliance if they didn't have weapons of mass destruction," asks Stahl.

"We would have found out, that's the point," says Edwards.

So we see that Kerry's Platform Committee thinks that condemning the war is wrong, but Edwards and Kerry have absolutely no problem with condemning the war simply because, allegedly, no WMD's have been found to date. Never mind the graves of mass destruction.

With a straight face, Edwards says to Stahl, about Kerry: "Second, flip-flopper? You gotta be kidding me. I mean, a guy who put his life on the line for the men who served with him in Vietnam every day?"

And I thought we were talking about the war in Iraq. This is so confusing.....

Posted by Mark D. Firestone at July 11, 2004 10:10 AM | TrackBack