(DEAN BARNETT HERE)

A ROUGH CONVENTIONAL WISDOM seems to be forming that if Ned Lamont wins tomorrow night, it will be disastrous for the Democratic Party. As Martin Peretz puts it in today’s Wall Street Journal, “If Mr. Lieberman goes down, the thought-enforcers of the left will target other centrists as if the center was the locus of a terrible heresy, an emphasis on national strength…The Lamont ascendancy, if that is what it is, means nothing other than that the left is trying, and in places succeeding, to take back the Democratic Party.” Concurring opinions, usually thoughtfully expressed, have seemingly come from every citizen of the mainstream, be they Republican or Democrat, with access to a TV camera or modem.

But they’re all wrong. The Democratic Party jumped the shark years ago. There’s nothing that will happen tomorrow, be it a Lamont rout or a Lieberman shocker, that will bring the party back to its senses. Similarly, there’s nothing that will happen tomorrow that will make the party any more insane, more angry or more destructive.

In short, regardless of the result, tomorrow will change nothing.

A LITTLE HISTORY IS IN ORDER. At some point in the 1980’s or 1990’s, liberalism became an utterly spent political force. The issues that the left had been right on from the start, like Civil Rights, had become settled politically. Across the political spectrum, you couldn’t find significant disagreement on such matters.

On issues where the left had been arguably less correct (depending on your political orientation) such as abortion and huge social programs like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, the left had been victorious. Conservative politicians who differed with the monstrous social programs tiresomely considered them to be the fourth rail of American politics; abortion had been taken out of play by the Supreme Court.

So all that remained for the modern left lacking any additional plans or ideas was to nibble around the margins of its previous victories. Suddenly things like how long a delivering mother stayed in the hospital became central to the Clinton Administration’s “vision.” One could argue that gay marriage is the prominent issue it is today because it rests on the periphery of the left’s greatest triumph, civil rights.

When the American left was animated by serious goals, it accomplished things of consequence. History will thank it for its fight on civil rights and the electoral sacrifices that it made; although some of us think moving retirement and health care away from free market principles has been disastrous, liberals still acted on a big vision and got things done.

But that was all over decades ago. With its grand plans accomplished, the Democratic Party became a permanent opposition; other than the occasional rear-guard maneuver to protect abortion rights, the Democratic Party had and has no plans other than to oppose whatever their domestic political opponents propose. If the Republican Party is the yin, the Democrats are committed to being the yang, regardless of the merits of the yin’s positions or intent.

ON SEPTEMBER 12, 2001, it became untenable for a major party to have such a governing philosophy. Although it’s not easy to remember, there were days when Republican congressmen were indignant over the close relationships that Tom Daschle and Dick Gephardt enjoyed with the president.

But by the time the 2004 presidential campaign swung into full gear, things had changed. Any whiff of bipartisanship had long since vanished. And the early front-runner for the Democrats was an obscure governor who had a talent for reflecting the rage so evident in the Democrats’ most loyal and vociferous supporters.

Eventually, Democratic voters rejected Howard Dean and opted for the bland, purportedly electable figure of John Kerry. But it is here where the Democratic Party lost it. While Dean’s campaign vanished in screaming ignominy, the movement that he embodied did not. Playing to their perceived base, even though the perceived base couldn’t muster better than a fourth place finish in the Iowa Caucuses, Democratic politicians became increasingly shrill and vicious.

After another repudiation at the ballot box in 2004, the Democrats opted to double down in fealty to their angriest partisans. Howard Dean became party chairman. Civility to the other side was almost completely banished. Think about it – when is the last time you’ve heard a Democrat say anything nice or even civil about this administration? The days when the President could work hand-in-hand with a Ted Kennedy and shove an abomination like No Child Left Behind down an unsuspecting nation’s throat were over.

This sorry pass isn’t the bloggers’ fault – it’s the politicians'. John Kerry won the nomination because his party deemed him a grown-up and thus electable. He has since opted to transform himself (literally) into a Daily Kos diarist.

No Democratic politician has offered a plan for how to deal with radical Islam. The Democratic pleas for negotiations with an Iranian regime which openly pledges itself to our destruction and has taken concrete steps towards achieving same are as dangerous as they are pathetic. The Democrats actually want to be the party jetting home from Tehran and holding an umbrella on the tarmac declaring peace in our time.

Their plans if they regain the House next year can be summed up in one word – impeachment. (Two other words also capture the nature of things – Chairman Dingell.) But as far as having an actual agenda, other than taxing Paris Hilton or something like that, there’s no there there.

ANYONE WHO THINKS TOMORROW WILL change anything is deceiving himself. The left has committed itself to the politics of substance-less anger and an attempted withdrawal from the world. If Marty Peretz thinks a Lieberman victory will jolt his party into dealing practically and hard-headedly with Jihadism, than he is deceiving himself regarding just how far gone the Democrats are.

The common argument seems to be that a Lamont victory will transform the Democrats. Alas, that transformation was completed long ago. While a Lamont victory would symbolize that transformation, it too will change nothing.

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