The other day when I noted that there now existed two wings of the Democratic party: the Gore wing and the National Democrats wing, I wrote: "Watch this space as this gap widens into a chasm over the next six months."
Wrong-O. It took about 36 hours.
Al Gore's speech to the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco had a rippling effect, and the ripples splashed up on Tom Daschle.
If anyone thought that George W. Bush was going to comment on what Al Gore said, they were wrong. If anyone thought that Daschle was going to ignore what Al Gore said, THEY were wrong.
Tom Daschle has spent this entire year trying to pin something - anything - on President Bush. As far back as early January (when Enron was going to be the something) Daschle gave a speech in Washington pointing out the many domestic ills facing the country.
It didn't work.
All year long Daschle has tried to be the spokesman for the political opposition. Unfortunately for him, there are a slew of others: Gore; Senators Edwards, Lieberman, and Kerry; Congressman Gephardt, and Vermont Governor Howard "It's All Name ID Right Now" Dean, who are trying to elbow their way into the spotlight.
So, Gore gives this speech which almost no one cared about except those who are paid good money - and I mean GOOD money - to help their clients position themselves to win some primaries.
Primaries are not won by energizing the centrists of your party. Primaries are won by energizing true believers - either on the Left or the Right. They are the ones who vote in primaries and they are the ones to whom appeals are made.
Tom Daschle's diatribe on the Senate floor the other day had very little to do with whether President Bush had accused Senate Democrats of being soft on terrorism.
He, by the way, did not. The President suggested that Senate Democrats were more interested in protecting the interests of the public employee unions (who represent the largest single source of soft money to the Democratic Party) than in getting a Homeland Security Bill signed into law. About which, the President was correct.
But even if the President had been swinging an axe in Crawford, Texas, Daschle would have created a scene because he was getting pressure from his friends and advisors on the Left to quit being a Presidential Patsy and take a swing at Bush. Daschle went on the floor, worked himself up into a froth and demanded an apology from the President.
That very night the President apologized by saying in a speech, "They should not respond to special interests in Washington, DC. They ought to respond to this interest - protecting the American people from future attack."
And the next day the President hosted a meeting about Iraq at the White House - complete with a Rose Garden photo - with 20 Members of the House. Six Republicans and FOURTEEN Democrats. If you want to see how angry they were with President Bush for politicizing the issue, check out of the photo on the Secret Decoder Ring page.
Just 40 days from an election - a partisan election - to make certain they were in the frame of the photo which would be running in every one of their hometown newspapers, the Members of Congress were standing so close to each other that ... That's never going to get through the MD of S&P, so suffice it to say they were standing very close to each other.
Once again, Tom Daschle has tried whisk the Mantle of Leadership away from his rivals. That "whooshing" sound you heard was, once again, the sound of the Mantel of Leadership slipping off his scrawny shoulders.
Daschle v. Gore. This is almost too good to be true.
On the Secret Decoder Ring page: The Rose Garden photo, a photo of Daschle on the Senate floor - and his tie, a list of attendees at the WH meeting, and the definition of MD of S&P.
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