Prediciton...2008 Dem Convention Chaos

Major Mike

Those that read this blog know that I am notoriously down on predictors, prognosticators, guessers, forecasters, and neo-prophets of all types.

…I do reserve a special place on my list for the patently poor prognosticators of hurricane activity at the CSU Department of Atmospheric Science…oooops, looks like they haven’t updated their hurricane forecasts since August…when they downgraded their forecasts for the third time this year. Does anyone recall how many Atlantic Hurricanes we have has since August…zero? One? And they were soooo close to getting it right. But I digress…

So, I am sure that it will shock our readers when I come out with this prediction that I will not revise over the next two years…sometimes geo-physical events, combined with planetary alignment, aided by warps in the time-space continuum, jostled by Einstein’s theory of relativity, make the future seem so clear that even a blind squirrel could see it. Such an event occurred to me early last week, and events in the middle of the week only strengthened my belief in my upcoming prediction. No, I am not predicting 17 more Atlantic hurricanes between now and the end of the month, and indeed my prediction is not a pretty one, but is must be made nonetheless.

Mark your calendar…you read it here first…the 2008 Democrat National Convention is going to make the 1968 Chicago Democrat National Convention look like a play date for snobby, elite toddlers. I think Denver and NYC should abandon their bids, and that this convention should be held where the least property damage could be done…maybe…in the middle of Death Valley, California.

Here’s why…

1. Dean and the Kos Kidz. The mainstream party will never be able to meet the exceedingly high expectations from the far left. While their influence in 2004 is well documented, they reached their high-water mark with Ned Lamont in the Connecticut Dem primary earlier in the year. They will blame their hand-picked candidate’s monumental demise on lack of party support, and take it as evidence that they, and their considerable efforts in 2004, have been wasted as the political climate has begun to push the Dems nationally back toward the center on most issues.

Take as evidence Nancy Pelosi’s significant non- presence during this election season. Nationally the party is coming to grips with having to move incrementally back to the right, and this will push Dean and the Kos Kidz out of the tent and into the rain. They will not go quietly into the night.

2. African-Americans call in their marker on the Dems. This is the event that occurred last week that I refer to above. Michael Steele has run an admirable campaign, and doggedly fought off talk of defeat through a great individual and party effort in Maryland. His momentum has brought along many black Democrats…Democrats frustrated over years of being taken for granted by the Democrat party.

" "The [Democratic] Party acts as though when they want our opinion, they'll give it to us. It's not going to be like that anymore," said Mr. Curry, who in 1994 became the county's first black executive and remains influential in the mostly black and heavily Democratic county."

In 2008 African-American Democrats will be calling in their IOUs. This will put the Dems in a vice. Long a mainstay of support for the floundering Dems, blacks are waking up to the fact that the Dems have been stringing them along for years. It wasn’t Dems that appointed two black SOSs in a row…one a black women. The Dems will have to start giving African-Americans the access to powerful positions that heretofore the Dems have shut them out of. The Dems aren’t likely to meet their expectations in terms of power sharing, and the resulting friction will not be easily soothed.

Throw into the mix the likely announcement that Senator Barack Obama will run for President in ’08. A full fledged candidacy by a fairly popular black candidate will not be dismissed with promises of cabinet level appointments. If Barack is able to get some momentum, mainstream Dems will be scrambling to put together a ticket…one that might have to include Obama…regardless of how that hurts/helps their chances to win the Presidency.

Should Obama be shut out of the process because of intra-party politics, stand by for the justifiable unleashing of fifty years of frustration. The Dem party will have their hands full between the African-American vote and the Kos Kidz.

3. Kerry’s ego. John Kerry’s Mount Rushmore size ego, will not allow him to get out of the way of the Dem train that is eager to kick him to the curb. Regardless the spanking he took last week, he is not likely to go quietly into the night, and he will be the candidate continually moving the party marker to the left…keeping the Kos Kidz excited, and making it nearly impossible for the Dem Party to move gingerly towards the center…a move they must make to remain viable nationally in 2008…see Lieberman-Lamont above.

Kerry’s high visibility, frequent gaffs, and continual movement left will begin to grate on moderates, and 9/11 Dems wishing to return to the party of FDR and Kennedy…John Kennedy…not Teddy. Kerry’s push left will cause a counter-push to the right, and create additional friction that will morph into frustration and anger.

4. Lack of a clear frontrunner. This is the 1968 story Part Deux. It is extremely unlikely that Hillary…with her strong negatives; or Obama…fighting uphill all the way; or Kerry…fighting himself and moving to the left; or Gore…fighting global warming…will run the table in the ’08 Dem primaries. This sets the table for a Robert Kennedyesque late entry into the primary process.

This would, because Dems and voting are involved, require months of internal legal sparring, acrimonious litigation, and a lot of name-calling that would dramatically increase internal tensions. Tensions that could only be fully resolved in a highly visible manner, with the help of a highly partisan press, at the finale of the process…the Convention.

If no candidate can run the table…look for a bitter and acrimonious Convention, at which, both the Kos Kidz and the African-American caucuses, increase in importance, and further divide a fissured party. It won’t be pretty amongst the frustrated rank-and-file…locked out of the smoky backrooms, and being kept out of the Convention site.

5. Iraq. By far the single issue that will set the tone for the Convention. Like Vietnam, it is already causing more gyrations in the Dem party than a basket full of snakes at a limbo party.

While many conservatives can find some fault with the execution of our Iraqi policy, most realize that this is a key battle in the GWOT, and that it cannot be lost.

The Dems on the other hand have been all over the map with Iraq “solutions”…no single one will appease all of their Party. Getting a majority of their constituents to agree on …immediate pull out…Vietnam War style abandonment…extended presence as part of our effort in the GWOT…more troops…less troops…will be an impossibility for a party that is more driven by emotion than clear reasoning. So, in the end, Iraq will cause the Democrat Party much more consternation than it will the Republicans, because in 2008…someone, (all the candidates anyway) in the Democrat Party, will finally have to offer a specific proposal for Iraq. And that one fact will begin a fissuring of the party that will make a gamma-ray burst seem like a single firecracker during a Honolulu New Year’s Eve.

I am not advocating civil disruption, nor do I wish it on the potential host cities, but mark my words…the 2008 Convention will be a calamitous event that will rival 1968 in its infamy. A conflagration of events is beginning to coalesce into an unstoppable force…a force that works against a peaceful process that produces a viable Presidential candidate, and sets the stage for an explosive release of frustration that will likely be mismanaged into chaos by the DNC leadership.

Good luck keeping a net on this one.

© Michael McBride 2006