ACME POLITICS:

Broad Issues Put Bush and Democratic Contenders on a Collision Course (Ronald Brownstein, February 17, 2003, LA Times)

However it turns out, the Senate Democratic filibuster against President Bush's nomination of Miguel A. Estrada to a U.S. appellate court is a straw in the wind. It's a signal that in the months ahead, the political conflict at home is likely to be as intense as the military conflict abroad.

If the United States goes to war with Iraq, don't look for the kind of home-front unity that followed the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Across the full range of issues, the gap between the parties is expanding at an increasing velocity. Each side's trajectory points toward a tumultuous congressional session and a 2004 presidential election that will present the country with the starkest choice it has faced since 1984, and arguably 1972.

On almost every front, the internal pressures on Bush and his potential Democratic rivals for 2004 are widening the distance between them. From the outset of his presidency, Bush has appeared determined -- at times almost fixated -- on deepening his support among the base Republican voters whose disillusionment helped sink his father's reelection campaign in 1992.

Even amid his planning for war, Bush this year has produced a domestic agenda of stunning ambition -- from massive tax cuts to fundamental restructuring of social programs -- that excites those voters as much as it stuns and angers Democrats. The prospect of war with Iraq has only deepened the lines of division. Unlike the pursuit of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, this war is substantially dividing the public along lines of partisanship and ideology, polls show.

With Bush pushing forward so insistently on domestic and foreign issues, Democrats -- especially the party's 2004 presidential contenders -- are facing enormous pressure from their base to resist him more forcefully than the party did last year. It's a telling measure that former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, a candidate for the 2004 nomination, routinely draws loud applause when he tells audiences he's running to represent "the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party."

None of the other contenders (other than longshot Al Sharpton) may follow Dean as far to the left, but the antipathy among activists for Bush's agenda is affecting all of them; even Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.), who appears determined to run largely as a centrist, started a recent stump speech in South Carolina by growling, "If you came here looking for Republican-lite, you are in the wrong room."

Watching the presidential race develop in these circumstances is like watching two cars speed off in opposite directions on a narrow racetrack: while they are heading away from each other, it's only a matter of time until they crash head-on.

The list of likely collisions is rapidly lengthening.

One need hardly point out that the Democrats were annihilated in 1972 and 1984 and succeeded in winning back the White House only by nominating two Republican-lite candidates, both of whom ran to the Right of liberal/moderate Republican opponents. If the two parties are in cars racing in opposite directions, the Democrats aren't on the racetrack, they're locked in Thelma and Louise's trunk. Posted by Orrin Judd at February 18, 2003 10:12 AM