I think it would be more accurate to call Minneapolis and St. Paul fraternal Siamese twins, joined at the Metrodome. St. Paul has an altogether more modest feel to it, though I suppose that only means that it is less successful economically. I like the cities, for short spans of time. The food is about as good as anywhere, if you know where to look. Its especially good for Ethiopian. Try the Red Sea if you want to enjoy wafts of very authentic immigrant culture. Crowds of young men often gather at the bar talking what sounds a lot like politics, though I certainly don't know Amharic.
On the freeways Clan Blanchard can pass for locals, almost, as we drive our Subaru Forester. So far as I can tell, this is the official vehicle of Blue Minnesota. Except that we don't have a Kerry bumper sticker, or better yet one that reads "wake me up in four years." You can take the temperature of the metropolitan left by glancing at the free city magazines distributed at almost every bar or restaurant, and the temperature is boiling mad.
Richard Cohen, a liberal in good standing who writes for the Washington Post, has an interesting column on the rabid Internet left. Cohen notes just how tolerant that part of the Democratic coalition can be.
I wrote about Stephen Colbert and his unfunny performance at the White House Correspondents' dinner. Kapow! Within a day, I got more than 2,000 e-mails. A day later, I got 1,000 more. By the fourth day, the number had reached 3,499 -- a figure that does not include the usual offers of nubile Russian women or loot from African dictators. The Colbert messages began with Patrick Manley (``You wouldn't know funny if it slapped you in the face'') and ended with Ron (``Colbert ROCKS, you MURDER'') who was so proud of his thought that he copied countless others. Ron, you're a genius. . . .
It seemed that most of my correspondents had been egged on to write me by various blogs. In response, they smartly assembled into a digital lynch mob and went roaring after me. If I did not like Colbert, I must like Bush. If I write for The Washington Post, I must be a mainstream media warmonger. If I was over a certain age -- which I am -- I am simply out of it, wherever ``it'' may be. All in all, I was -- I am and, I guess, I remain -- the worthy object of ignorant, false and downright idiotic vituperation. . . .
The message in this case truly is the medium. The e-mails pulse in my queue, emanating raw hatred. This spells trouble -- not for Bush or, in 2008, the next GOP presidential candidate, but for Democrats. The anger festering on the Democratic left will be taken out on the Democratic middle. (Watch out Hillary!) I have seen this anger before -- back in the Vietnam War era. That's when the anti-war wing of the Democratic Party helped elect Richard Nixon. In this way, they managed to prolong the very war they so hated.
The hatred is back. I know it's only words now appearing on my computer screen, but the words are so angry, so roiled with rage, that they are the functional equivalent of rocks once so furiously hurled during anti-war demonstrations. They hurt in a different way.
I can appreciate some of it. Institution after institution failed America -- the presidency, Congress and the press. They all endorsed a war to rid Iraq of what it did not have. Now, though, that gullibility is being matched by war critics who are so hyped on their own sanctimony that they will obliterate distinctions, punishing their friends for apostasy and, by so doing, aiding their enemies. If that's going to be the case, then Iraq is a war its critics will lose twice -- once because they couldn't stop it, and once more at the polls.
Like Cohen, I have seen this excessive passion wound my side of the argument. I have said in this blog and in my American News columns that the activist core of the Republican coalition hated Bill Clinton all out of proportion to anything he did, said, or was. It cost the Republicans dearly during the final years of Clinton's presidency. I think that the corresponding hatred of Bush on the left helped Bush hang onto his Pennsylvania Avenue address for four more years. Whether that excessive passion will help the Republicans this time around is doubtful, but I think Cohen is right that it will hurt Democrats in the long run. It is not only Bush that the radical left despises, its the people and the states that voted for him. See exhibit B on the right.
In Federalist Ten Madison argued that one of the great things about a large Republic is that the more extreme factions cannot easily unite. But the short guy from Mont Pelier didn't have the Internet to worry about. There is a real danger that the net gives the most extreme factions in each coalition a more clearer voice makes it possible for them to occupy the center. This is bad.
It may only be my bias, but just right now the left wing blogosphere seems much less temperate than the right. I am not saying that the folk on the one side are better than those on the other. I am just saying that, for now, one side exercises more reserve. When, sooner or later, there is a Democrat in the White House, we will learn whether this is more than a product of circumstance.
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