The sudden shift of the Kerry-Edwards campaign towards an “optimistic” and “positive” tone suggests that Kerry’s advisors are probably saying what I’ve been thinking: there’s a real potential for the whole Democratic Convention to turn into an out-of-control display of the collective psychosis which has come to grip much of the party in the last few years.  I put “optimistic” and “positive” into quotations marks because I’ve seen no evidence that the Democratic campaign is either beyond the fact that these words are regularly inserted into pessimistic and negative statements, leading to press releases with titles like “Positive Tone of Kerry-Edwards Campaign Demonstrates that George W. Bush is a Soulless Asshole” or “Optimistic John Kerry Warns of America’s Humiliation, Bankruptcy, Destruction.”

The problem is obvious to me: the only thing unifying the Democratic Party is an abiding hatred of George Bush.  Howard Dean’s followers are still seething over what they perceive as the political assassination of their beloved candidate, hard core anti-war activists are mostly ignored by the party, Democratic leaders run from openly embracing liberal positions on social issues, instead using the sort of “code words” that they once accused Republicans of using when they talked about race. 

A quick survey of various Democratic publications reveals that the beliefs of the average Democratic activist (as opposed to the average Democratic voter) go something like this:

George W. Bush and all other Republicans of any note are evil.
The “War on Terrorism” is unjustified and should be discontinued.
Full-on gay marriage is a “human right” and anyone opposed to it is a bigot.
Abortion on demand, under any circumstances whatsoever, is a right guaranteed by the Constitution.
Israel is, at worst, an evil Apartheid state and, at best, an unnecessary drag on US foreign policy.
Rich people should pay substantially more in taxes.

These are just a few of the readily apparent core convictions of a great deal of the Democratic Party’s activist base.  These aren’t the things the party generally says for public consumption or what many of its voters think, but they’re certainly close to what your average delegate to the Democratic National Convention thinks.  The heart and soul of the party does not, in other words, belong to Bill Clinton, John Kerry, John Edwards or anyone else trying to win on the DLC-model.  It belongs to Howard Dean, Al Gore, and Michael Moore: the angry, paranoid, manic (or “Democratic”) wing of the wing of the Democratic Party. 

Herein lies the problem: what happens if, on Thursday night, John Kerry vows to “stay the course” in Iraq, as he has been doing as of late, and is greeted with silence or boos?  Frankly, I think that it’s a definite possibility.  What happens if frenzied Kucinich and Dean delegates try to pull some sort of stunt with regards to the platform?  Anyone who thinks that they’re not crazed enough to give it a shot hasn’t been reading enough Democratic Underground. 

In such an atmosphere, even the most responsible politician might be drawn, by the general enthusiasm, into over-heated rhetoric and unwise statements.  What Al Gore or Howard Dean might say under such conditions is a problem of an entirely different order to magnitude.  Word is that the Democratic National Committee won’t be trying to make any changes to Al Gore’s speech.  If this is the case, they’d better hope that someone force-feeds him his meds before he speaks.  Were Gore to give a performance tomorrow like the ones he’s given the last two times he’d made major speeches, the overwhelming reaction of most sane Americans would be to get down on their knees and thank God that the man didn’t win the election.  Before I used to picture Al Gore responding to 9-11 with appeasement and a cynical effort to advance his domestic policies, now I begin to wonder if his response wouldn’t have been more like the character played by Martin Sheen in the film version of Stephen King’s The Dead Zone, who orders a sudden nuclear strike in a mad effort to fulfill his destiny and then greets his Vice President by announcing, “The missiles are flying. Hallelujah, Hallelujah!”    

The problem that John Kerry has is this: he’s not leading the Democratic Party; he’s simply running out in front of them.  There’s a big and obvious difference here.  Someone who’s leading a mob can get them to stop if necessary.  Someone simply running in the front will be trampled if they slow. 

What happens in the days ahead will matter a great deal.  If the Democratic Convention turns into a disaster on the level of the 1992 Republican National Convention, with almost no bounce at all for the candidate, John Kerry’s campaign is pretty much dead.  Once John Kerry secures the nomination he’s got just $75 million he can spend between then and Election Day.  The Bush campaign has almost that much money that it has to spend in August alone.  And of course, the media being the media, if the Kerry Convention does flop, there’ll be a whole month for every to dissect why.