The Twister of 2010: The Democrat Crack-up

Peggy Noonan in today’s Wall Street Journal:

The Democratic Party right now is showing signs of coming apart under the pressure of the election and two years of an unpopular presidency. But it’s not a split in two, with the left versus the establishment. It’s more like a splintering, with left-leaning activists distancing themselves from the party’s politicians, and moderate politicians distancing themselves from Mr. Obama.

And part of what’s driving it is what is driving the evolution of the Republican Party. The Internet changed everything. Everyone has facts now, knows who voted how and why. New thought leaders spring up and lead in new directions. Total transparency leads to party fracturing. Information dings unity. We are in new territory.

Another tornado: The president’s influential counselor, David Axelrod, attempted this week to insinuate into the election what Democrats used to deride as “wedge issues.” In an interview he said abortion will “certainly be an issue,” for Democrats. It will be raised “across the country.”

This suggests a certain desperation. Whatever stand you take on the social issues, you have to be blind to think they will make a big difference this year. The issue this year is the size, role, weight and demands of government, and the public sense that its members selfishly look to their own needs and not those of the country. A GOP congressman told me this week that he very much disagrees with the characterization of tea party and Republican voters as enraged or livid. They are scared, he said. He has never, in two decades in politics, heard so many people tell him they are “scared,” frightened for their own futures and for the future of their country.

No one will get revved in the way Mr. Axelrod hopes who isn’t already a reliable Democratic vote. His raising of a wedge issue speaks not only of a certain cynicism but of what appears to be an endemic White House cluelessness.

Read the whole thing here.