THE DEMOCRATIC TRAP - AT 8:16 A.M. ET:  The Democratic Party is in serious trouble.  In a way, it's a victim of its success in the last two election cycles.  The Democrats have never learned - at least in the last generation - how to handle the true believers in its ranks, the leftist ideologues, many centered in the California, Massachusetts and Washington state delegations to Congress. 

These people represent a faction that came back to the Democrats during the sixties as part of the so called "anti-war" movement, and contains the leftward fringes of the civil-rights and feminist contingents.  They were responsible for the nomination of George McGovern in 1972 and the destruction, for decades, of the traditional Democratic coalition.  It was Bill Clinton who, more or less, was successful in patching that coalition back together, if only tentatively.  Barack Obama held it together by claiming to run as a moderate, a claim rapidly unraveling.

Now there is worry that the true believers will do more harm to President Obama than will the Republicans.  Like most true believers, and the Republican Party has its share as well, they demand that every idea they propose be endorsed in full, no compromises, and believe that they, and not the broad middle, represent the will of the American people.

Rational Democratic strategists like Lanny Davis are worried.  Their worry reveals the contempt they have for the ideologues.  Davis writes in The Politico:

I worry more about purist ideologues of the left in my Democratic Party who believe on health care that perfect is the enemy of the good.

I'll bet many such advocates, sincere and dedicated as they are, are also those who already have the luxury of a health care policy or the wealth to afford one. If they were one of the 45 million people who have no or little insurance, I'll bet they would be willing to accept an insurance system that guaranteed their equal access to the health insurance system without the public option -- at least for now.

Davis hits on a ticking time bomb within the party - the influence of wealthy ideologues who will never be affected by their own ideology - the kind who can easily write a check for the most expensive health-care plans or who have first-class air tickets in their leather attachés so they can get out in case of riots.

Harry Truman knew how to handle the extremists within his party.  In 1948 he understood that elections are won in the middle, and basically told the hard-core segregationists, on the one hand, and the old hard-left "progressives" on the other, that there were limits to what he could accept.  They walked out.  He won.

August 11, 2009