THE UNNOTICED MOMENT – AT 7:06 P.M. ET:  You've all been reading analyses of the State of the Union message, even though it's already been forgotten.  The 24-hour news cycle requires endless coverage of the same story, if only a speech.

Overall, my reading of the punditocracy is 1) the speech was highly political, 2) designed to position Mr. Obama for 2012;  2) it was well delivered and seemed to make an initial positive impression on the American people, if most flash polls are to be belived; 3) but it lacked detail and tended to be a desirable laundry list with no means of paying for it.

In addition, many pundits criticized the president for the thinness of his foreign-policy comments.

I'd like to bring up something else, and I'm surprised no one has noticed it:  There was a point in the speech when the president spoke of the probability of some cuts in the defense budget.  This was unsurprising.  But then he said that some people wanted even deeper cuts.  There was an immediate burst of applause, and it was not from a small number of people.  What we heard was the left wing of the Democratic Party in the House and Senate, the wing that now firmly controls the party, the wing that has little or no interest in national defense.

When Harry S. Truman ran in 1948, he confronted the segregationist wing of his party, which promptly walked out of the Democratic National Convention and backed Strom Thurmond in his third-party bid for president.  What many don't recall is that Truman also confronted the small, but vociferous hard left of his party, refusing to bow to their demands for appeasement of their darling Soviet Union.  Truman's ally in this struggle was Eleanor Roosevelt.  The hard left, following the segregationists, also bolted the party and backed Henry Wallace, who had been Franklin D. Roosevelt's third-term vice president, for president.

The leftists, and their spiritual heirs, eventually drifted back into the Democratic Party in the sixties, some to oppose the Vietnam War, others as part of the civil-rights and feminist movements.  They gained control of the party in 1972 with their nomination of George McGovern, and they have been a significant force ever since, coming into their own with the election of Barack Obama in 2008.  They are far out of the mainstream, representing perhaps 18-20% of the American people.  They oppose the war on terror, or any other war America might fight, favor the nanny state, and believe that democracy is the thing that happens when they win. 

The fullness of that applause – applause for the further disarming of America – was frightening.  These people must be defeated, for the future of this country depends on it.

January 26, 2011