Sister Souljah Opportunities for Dems

Politico-pundit Pat Hynes at CrushKerry makes a very interesting point this morning. Since they’re trying to figure out a method to worm their way back into the graces of at least some centrist/right voters, how about denouncing the omnipresent thrashing of Christmas by secular liberals? In other words, take on some of the more militant elements of their coalition and publicly shame them for their indefensible position on Christmas.

I found this very intriguing since I had just had a similar epiphany as I came across a little segment in the Opinion Journal’s Best of the Web, “The Dems’ Abortion Trap.” None other than John Kerry told a liberal 527 group that they needed new ways to make people understand they didn’t like abortion. It occurred to me when I saw the blurb from the article posted on Free Republic and before I read it that Democratic candidates who probably don’t have much a stake in the abortion issue surely must resent this noose around their necks.

Think about it, amoral candidates like Bill Clinton or John Kerry, who I bet couldn’t care less about the abortion issue either way, are forced to side with extreme libs and thus marginalize themselves with middle America. This is happening with more and more issues. At some point, some charismatic Democrat may have the guts to take on his party in a gigantic Sister Souljah movement on a variety of these marginalizing issues. Other than a severe and persistent downturn in the War on Terror, that’s probably the Dems best bet to rebuild something close to a majority for future presidential elections. But since it is not who they are, it will be difficult to see how they can pull it off. Pro-war is not who they are either, which is why John Kerry — even with his ??? military record — couldn’t pull off trying to be hawkish. Grassroots Dems never believed he was pro-war.

At any rate I thought it was interesting that Patrick Hynes came to parallel observations about somewhat similar issues — though the Sister Souljah analogy hadn’t occurred to me until I read Pat’s excellent post.