The Observer, April 7, 2006
Volume XXXVIII, Issue 23
Democrats must weed out extremists to regain power
What's the deal with the anti-Bush left? I'm not talking about mainstream Democrats who hate the President's political policies and I'm not talking about peaceniks who oppose the war in Iraq. I'm not talking about union workers who oppose CAFTA or certain tax cuts, and I'm not talking about secularists who think Bush is too religious. (Heck, I don't agree with many of his policies – immigration, No Child Left Behind, and prescription drugs to name just a few – and I have three posters supporting the president in my room.)
I'm talking about that minority of Americans who truly hate Bush not as the president, but as a man and as a person. These are the people who pray – well, probably not pray – for his assassination. People who so hate the president that they would cheer his death. These people are linked ideologically to the people who think the president is no different than Stalin, Hitler, and Mao Zedong. This mentality goes beyond thinking that President Bush is a bad or ineffective president to thinking of him as the embodiment of evil, who actively uses his power and influence to make America worse.
These people scare me, and therefore I like to pretend that they only live in far off places like Berkeley, Ann Arbor, Tehran, and Beijing. Sadly I'm wrong, because it recently came to my attention that some of these Bush-haters call Case home. Through the College Republicans grapevine – yes, it is a local chapter of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy – I recently learned of a disturbing depiction of the president on a kiosk on Southside. As a Northsider who rarely makes the trip to the distant Southside of campus, I have yet to see the painting in person, but I have seen photos and heard descriptions.
Some whack job created a stencil and painted an AK-47 pointing at the president's head. I hope that the university takes care of this situation quickly and removes this sickening picture. No matter your political persuasion, I hope that a painting of a gun pointed at the President's face is offensive. I have two questions for whatever nutcase wasted their time with this: Do you really want the president to be killed or do you simply have a frighteningly twisted sense of humor? And do you think this is a poignant political statement, capable of helping you resurrect the left or the Democratic Party, both of which are in disarray in Ohio and nationally? Anyone influenced by this depiction already hates the president; you don't have to convince them to vote against the president. But no moderate Republican or independent voter is swayed by calls for presidential assassination or sweeping tyrant analogies.
This isolated incident illustrates a broader problem with the modern Democratic Party. I know that most of the people who fill the Party are honest and sincere. They genuinely want to make America better, yet, they refuse to renounce the extremists who should not make up their base. The Democratic Party is the minority party at both the state and the national level. If they hope to regain any power – which would be good for our two-party system – the Democrats must embrace the moderate Americans that made them the majority party for decades. As long as Democrats are more closely tied with Howard Dean and Cindy Sheehan than Mark Warner and Bill Richardson, the Democratic Party will remain out of power. It's time for the Democrats to accept political realities and move back to the right, toward the center of the political spectrum.
