How the Democrats Can Lose the Presidential Election

I am a liberal democrat who desperately wants to see a Democrat in the White House. Right now the polls show that the voters overwhelmingly favor the Democrats over the Republicans. These polls are backed by fundraising numbers. If the 2008 election were a referendum between the Republicans and the Democrats, I would have no doubt about the outcome.

But presidential elections are not referenda about parties, about policies, or about history. They are contests between personalities. Many voters cast their ballots based on which person they want to occupy the White House rather than which party they want to head the executive branch. The best proof of that was the 2000 election, which ended essentially in a tie. Had it been a referendum between parties, the Democrats would have won overwhelmingly, since the previous eight years had brought peace and prosperity.

The Democrats can lose by nominating the wrong candidate, and they most surely win lose if they listen to the Michael Moore-Cindy Sheehan extremists in their party.

Recently a group of McGovern supporters held a thirty-fifth anniversary reunion paying homage to the 1972 Democratic Candidate who ended up winning only Massachusetts and the District of Columbia. At the time, he lost more states than any other Democratic candidate in history. (Walter Mondale later lost an even bigger landslide to Ronald Reagan.) Radical activists at the recent reunion were quoted as saying, "We need another McGovern now more than ever." With that attitude, the Democrats will again carry fewer than a handful of states. I call that "the one-state solution." Although I actively supported McGovern in 1972, the last thing we need now is another McGovern. What we do need is a centrist candidate who will be tough on terrorism and seek to strike the appropriate balance between security and liberty. We need a pragmatist, a realist, and a tough-minded candidate who wants to win.

The Democrats should learn from Ned Lamont's loss to Joe Lieberman in Connecticut. It's easy to win a Democratic primary by pandering to the Hard Left. But winning that way virtually assures defeat in the general election. Any Democratic candidate who wants to be seriously considered for president should stop running for the nomination and begin right now running for the general election. The slogans that help in the primaries often hurt in the general election.

The choice is ours. Do we want another McGovern -- an idealist who stands for everything good and who will lose the election overwhelmingly? Or do we want a compromising pragmatist who will turn off some extremists but increase the Democratic prospects for winning the general election? We can't have both. To me, the choice is obvious.