The Democrats I talk to have a weird perception of things. They have begun equating the nations distaste for the War with a distaste for conservatism in general. In short they believe that because the country is fed up with the president they are ready to go liberal on all the issues. Because of this the Dems could well be ready to tear themselves apart.

As I keep pointing out most conservatives who now dislike Bush haven’t suddenly turned into leftist members of the NAACP, PETA or NOW. They are actually pretty unhappy because they believe George Bush is far too liberal on the issues, not too conservative. They dislike his spending, his nation-building & his intrusion by the federal government into our lives. They dislike the president for pushing amnesty for illegal immigrants, giving away ports to foreign nations, growing the nations debt while growing the size of the government, not banning gay marriage or abortion, imposing the federal governments whims on education and for pushing what is a pretty liberal concept of interventionism on the rest of the world. A growing number of conservatives and “right-leaning” independents haven’t jumped ideology, they have just jumped ship on the president and the Congress under him.

So this week when John Edwards & Barack Obama declared their support for both Universal Health Care and government funded abortions, they took a step into policy territory that could well destroy them in a general election. Obama took it further by promising he would give the national socialized medicine in his first four years and declared his support for sex education for kindergartners.

I fear it is a glimpse into the future for Democrats who will begin clobbering each other the closer we get to the primary and who will run as far left as they can in order to take the primary. The problem is making statements like sex-education for kindergartners and taking anything but a moderate stance on most of these national issues is like committing suicide in a general election. If Obama doesn’t think that sex-education statement can and will be distorted a billion different ways, he deserves to be knocked over the head with it.

Bill Clinton did very little as president to move forward a liberal agenda and because of it he won two terms as president even in the face of mass corruption charges. More important for the long-term he was able to begin swinging business interests toward Democrats. After these years of failed Iraq policy military interests are beginning to entertain democrats too, but it isn’t guaranteed to last. A few more months of Mike Gravel & Dennis Kucinich like headlines that read like a Noam Chomsky dossier on the world and the Democrats could get hung with the “weak on defense” label once again.

Howard Dean is part of this equation too. Though he was embraced by liberals in 2004 for his Iraq policy he took over the Democratic Party leadership and moved forward a “Fifty-State-Strategy” and began urging candidates to embrace moderate America. Candidates like Jim Webb, a more moderate and somewhat conservative candidate in Virginia, helped move that strategy forward in 2006 bringing the Democrats to power in the House & Senate.

It was the theme of Barack Obama & seemingly John Edwards in 2004, no more red & blue America, one america where the people come together and where moderation moves us forward. They had populist appeal, not radical left policy positions at the time. (An example of how things have moved, in 2004 John Edwards used Bush’s deficits as a campaign weapon. In 2007 Edwards now claims deficits don’t matter and wants to spend as much money as possible on social welfare programs. How do you think that will play with corporate and independent America?)

When I look at the United States, one where more Americans are becoming independents than Democrats or Republicans, where the North and South are migrating together, where states like Indiana, Iowa, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, Virginia, Florida, New Hampshire, could all go either way, I see Democrats having the ability to not just slide by in an election but actually run the board. Not another election of slim margins but instead a mandate to change things. They have to win the presidency first.

George W. Bush did not run as an ultra-conservative in 2000. He ran as a moderate, a “compassionate” conservative, someone who would “unite us” and not “divide us”. Bill Clinton did the same. Their presidencies have been some of the most divisive in history. The reason? There are plenty but both took very sharp turns to their base once they entered the White House. Then when both failed to get their policies through they took sharp turns to the middle suddenly alienating everyone.

The drive in primaries is always to go to the left or right and then return for the general election. The problem is we don’t live in such an isolated world anymore. With blogs, 24/7 news, magazines published on demand, podcasts and the like everything said and done in the primaries will be used over and over and over again on a loop against the candidates in the general and it will go both ways.

Those on the left and right flanks who were promised the world for months on end during the primaries will witness their candidates cooling their rhetoric and becoming those things they hate. Those in the middle will be bombarded with those early promises and believe, rightly so, they are only being used now.