It is amazing how the actions of a senator whose name many right-wingers would rather have buried out of sight and out of mind still causes quite a stir. It is perhaps the very testament to the threat that she poses to the direction our nation’s leaders and followers want it to take. You know who I am talking about: Hillary! Clinton.

I didn’t blog about the visits to Iraq by both Bush and Hillary! because I believe there’s hardly anything really worth saying.

Many have taken the task at picking apart the ramifications of Hillary’s visit. Chris Lawrence is considering the news and trying to find out whether she was indeed performing a class act or not. Matt Stinson himself admits that getting into her head is impossible (and rightfully so). Dean Esmay himself has pinned down what I’m trying to say here:

Unfortunately, I think your average person sees Hillary Clinton as the backroom leader of the Democratic Party. They also see her doing absolutely nothing to upbraid Democratic Presidential candidates who, for the most part, have been using the inevitable casualties and setbacks in the war effort for their own partisan ends. Every casualty proof of failure and incompetence, every success ignored or portrayed as insufficient. That’s how the most partisan Democrats have been behaving for most of this last year, and most of the Democratic Presidential candidates have either done this directly, or tacitly given it approval by not objecting to it. With no one (except obscure figures like Zell Miller) within Democratic ranks calling people out for this attrocious behavior, it makes Democrats look terrible. Your average moderate Democrat might be able to escape being lumped in with the worst elements like that, but Senator Clinton is largely seen as one of her party’s main ringleaders. This makes her powerful, but it also makes her look more guilty by association than your average Senator or Congressman. [Emphasis added --- ed.]

The Left needs to burn down its house. It needs to destroy itself and rebuild from the ashes of their self-destruction.

More than examining the cold shoulder reaction to Hillary, more than flinging mud at the Looney Left’s reaction to Bush’s visit, we need to look a bit farther past in front of our faces and think about what it means for The Left in general. I am one to believe that The Left has lost its way, blinded and cripled by extreme bitterness at the very idea of President Bush being in office. I was not a watcher of politics during the Clinton years; I was in the Philippines growing up with the impression that he was the biggest hope for America. [That's a revelation, eh? --- ed. Shuddup. --- Jay.]

Michael Demmons, The Discount Blogger, also brings together what I’m trying to say:

This might gain her favor with the troops. But it will not gain her favor in the Democratic party, because most of them agree with Dean and Kerry. It might make her look a little more presidential and classy, but only to those on the right.

While some people think that the polarization of American politics is an empty accusation with statements like, “Polarized? Nah! Everyone just shifted right a little bit,” it is clear that the shrill fringes of the Left has become very partisan. The One Mind requirement has become very clear among the commenters, the lapdogs of big-name liberal blogs such as Atrios, Kevin Drum, Matthew Yglesias (who himself reacts with a “Whatever” at accusations of bitter partisanship), and Daily Kos. When a religious Liberal went on to guest at Kos, her stint was summarily executed for reasons I cannot fathom other than being of a different mindset than most. Brushstroke thinks that those cut from her cloth might just save the Democratic party and be the fulcrum on which the Left will turn come 2004. I think it is too early for people like Melanie to come out and be the calm, moderate voice that allowed the Right to form a popular base, the so-called Silent Majority, during the period of Clinton-bashing.

The Vocal Minority of the Fringe Left will eat alive anyone who doesn’t agree. They’ll do so by either abjectly condemning dissenting opinion, or by simply burying it, ignoring it, while turning the volume up. The backlash will be beautiful. They will eventually be disavowed by their own silent majority (see: Jesse Jackson), and they will take with them in their fall into disrepute anyone of like mind.

With Howard Dean and other shrill members of the Democratic Party leading the way, the path to self-destruction might complete itself by 2008. I am not assured of Bush’s victory in the 2004 elections, but I would hope that Bush wins, first of all because I think that with the choices we have he is best suited for the job, and second, because this will allow the Democratic Party to continue burning its own house down to the ground.

Who do you think will be the least beam standing? Hers is the name that strikes agitation among right-wingers more than any of the Nine Dwarves: Hillary Clinton. If she continues the sly class act that she is pulling, if she keeps on performing the way Howard Owens thinks she is performing, she will be a force to reckon with in 2008, but only, and only if she vocally disavows the Fringe Left for what it is: a boatanchor deployed during a storm, ready to be torn out of its mounting, taking the entire ship along with it. We on the right need to be ready to accept that she might just pull it off.