The Democrats national security problem

Ralph Reiland:

Things are falling apart for the Democrats because many Americans think liberals aren't tough enough to do what's necessary to defend the country.

Here's how Rick Perlstein at The Village Voice summarizes this perception of Democrat weakness by red-state voters:

"We talk about Southern culture, blue-collar culture, NASCAR culture -- which overlaps, in complicated ways, with evangelical culture. Certainly one tenet they all share is this: When somebody punches you in the gut, you don't smile, stride halfway between his point and yours, and say that maybe the guy has a point.

"Behaving like that is precisely what has made the Democrats look so unsympathetically unfocused and confused to so many people. You have to convince them that you've got a fighting faith, too. Or else you can't fight."

You don't win, in other words, by saying that Osama bin Laden isn't all that different from Thomas Paine, or that America's ambitions in the world aren't so dissimilar from the goals of yesterday's Nazis or today's jihadists, or that maybe Pol Pot and Che had a point.

...

"Clearing brush in Crawford beats windsurfing in Nantucket any day," opined Brinkley. "A key to Bush's victory is that he outpolled Kerry by 11 points among men (and by a higher percentage than that among white men), while losing by a small margin among women."

In fact, Bush beat Kerry among white male voters by 62 percent to 37 percent, a remarkable 25-point gap.

Still, leave out the swagger and war and the Democrats remain in a descent because millions of voters see the party as simply incapable of coming clean about the downside of an overblown and intrusive state, no matter what the price.

Excellent comentary. You can just see the Dems saying yes, but....

UPDATE: Perlstein believes Reiland has mischaraterized his criticism of the Democrats. I think Perlstein's comments are a fair reflection of the perception of Democrats standing on their own. Reiland appears to be stretching to make a point about the charaterization of some Democrats positions. However, Reiland's comments do sound like some of the things that have been printed in the "Democratic Underground" type sites, though I have not tried to varify this. Reiland's statitical info is hard to argue with. Democrats are having a difficult time appealing to white male voters.

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