like fishing in an oil spill

The DLC, quite honestly, baffles me. I understand the allure of "centrism," and I get their tactic of tacking right to capture the center (though considering what Americans actually say their views are in polls, I think it's delusional), and I certainly understand that they feel like they're losing the battle for the soul of the Democratic party (if only that were so!). But I think they're stuck in an earlier time. If there was ever a time when the values of the majority of the electorate tracked closer to the Republicans than the Democrats, this ain't it. In fact, judging from the pluralities of most opinion polls, the American people currently oppose the GOP on virtually every issue. It makes no sense, in light of these facts, to emulate the Republicans.

Of course, then again, the head of the DLC, Harold Ford, is a Democrat who did exactly that in a state where the people actually are pretty conservative, and what happened? People chose the actual conservative over the GOP-lite candidate, which is why he's heading the DLC as his day job instead of representing the people of Tennessee in the US Senate. Go figure.

But here's where I'm really stumped. If you're the head of the DLC, which supposedly embraces a blue-dog Democratic ideology to appeal to the middle, why would you go bash Democrats for being too extremist? I mean, if you don't want people to think your party's full of loony leftists, why go on TV and call them a bunch of loony leftists? And more to the point, why would you do it on FOX News? Surely Ford isn't so ill-informed that he never saw the poll that showed that 88% of FOX News viewers voted for George W. Bush in 2004, right? Does Harold Ford, the head of an organization committed to electing Democrats, not know that FOX News viewers vote more reliably Republican than gun owners, white Evangelical Christians, self-identified conservatives, and supporters of the Iraq War? Who does he think he's convincing here? Why not just have the RNC send an email to its supporters about this?