There is only one thing that could be worse for the Democrats than the revelation of more Reverend Wright tapes, and that is more success in Iraq. Wright will definitely take down Obama if he is the nominee, and may influence some congressional elections, but, success in Iraq would destroy the entire Democrat platform. It could turn all their "cakewalk" races, all their plans of sweeping two branches of government, into a total loss.

The Democrats have been running on two positions. Yes, they have retained their full party platform, full of entitlements and anti-business legislation and universal health care, but they have downplayed the importance of those. Except for occasional nods at "handling the housing crisis" whenever the news cycle focuses on housing prices, the Democrats have been very directed on keeping two points in the public's mind. First, that Bush is bad. Second, that Iraq is a "quagmire" and we are losing.

It is a strange strategy, but I suppose it makes sense. First, they expected these elections to be a cakewalk, as Bush's approval ratings were so low¹. Second, they are probably going to nominate a candidate who has run without declaring a position, winning precisely because of that. So, maybe keeping focused on just two points is a sensible policy.

Then again, those two points really boil down to just one. When you think about it, most of the Bush hatred (at least from the left²) boils down to hatred because of his support for the war. So, if the war turns around, then hatred of Bush will seem much less important³.

Unfortunately for the Democrats, while they are suffering from their candidates' attempts to sabotage their own races, fortunes in Iraq seem to be turning around as well.

Yes, the press did spend a whole lot of time "memorializing" the "grim milestone" of 4000 dead. (Read that as "Drooling over the chance to squeeze ratings out of soldiers' corpses.") But I don't think that made as much of an impression as the MSM and Democrats had hoped. 4000 dead after 5 years just doesn't seem a huge number to most people. The city of Baltimore had almost 1500 dead from homicide alone in those 5 years. Yes, it is a tragedy when any soldier dies, but we also don't expect to fight wars without suffering any fatalities.

What is important is that the Iraqi government is now starting to carry out its own military operations. True, they have been less than impressive, but the Iraqis did win, and, more importantly, it means the Democrats can't whine about the Iraqis "not doing anything". Or, if they do, it allows their opponents to come back with tales of Iraqi heroism in combat, which is just the message the Democrats want to avoid.

More important still, it appears that the more radical Shiite influence, and thus the influence of Iran, is slowly fading from Iraq. Yes, al-Sadr and company are still around, but they are slowly being forced from the field, which means the Democrats will not be able to complain any longer about how we "handed Iraq to the Iranians". Of course, now the Democrats are trying to sell this as "an Iraqi civil war", but I think they may have lost on this one. They spent so long building up al-Sadr as the anti-US bogeyman (mainly to accuse the US whenever we had to deal with al-Sadr) that al Maliki's actions against him seem a good idea to most Americans.

There is also growing evidence of al Qaida atrocities against Iraqi civilians, and growing support for the Iraqi government, and the US, among average Iraqis, all serving to undermine the Democrat message that the US is occupying a hostile country, filled with indigenous, and popular, insurgents. Slowly Americans are rediscovering the truth that we really did liberate the Iraqis, and that most of these "insurgents" are imported terrorists who are hidden by the populace mostly out of fear of reprisals. Despite the propaganda of the Democrats and the MSM, it appears the initial Bush message was correct. For the most part, we would have been welcomed as liberators were it not for hostile agents imported to fight us⁴. (As an aside, whenever Democrats mock the statement that we would be welcomed as liberators, I feel the need to point out there is a video record of precisely that, our troops being welcomed as liberators when we freed Iraq from Saddam. That problems evolved later does not remove that fact. So I find Democrats who mock the statement to be incredibly dishonest.)

So, though the news is not all rosy, and there will doubtless be a few setbacks before November, I think the news from Iraq is good enough that it should worry Democrats. They have pinned their hopes almost entirely on a US military defeat, and it appears that defeat will never happen. It must be quite frustrating for them, especially coming on top of their candidates' problems.

Which brings me to a final question, for all those who support the Democrats: How do you justify supporting a party whose victory depends almost entirely on the US losing a war? In other words, why do you support the people who are cheering for us to be defeated?

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1. The Democrats seem to forget that the Democrat congress has even lower numbers, so they may be pinning too much hope on their congressional races. As they have the majority, if a "throw them all out" mentality evolves before November, it will hurt Democrats more than Republicans.

2. The low numbers for Bush also include dislike from the right, which has little to do with Iraq in most cases, but, as right wing voters are unlikely to go over to the Democrats, I think we can ignore their reasons for purposes of this essay.

3.  I am still skeptical of this strategy, as Bush is not running in 2008, nor has McCain been close to the Bush administration. Even had things gone well for the Democrats, I think they would have had a hard time turning disappointment with Bush into dislike of McCain. But since Hillary and Obama decided to self-destruct, we will never know.

4. Yes, there are disaffected Baathists and some militant Shiites who see the US as occupiers. Still, it appears that the vast majority of Iraqis are happy to have Saddam gone, and are not in a hurry to side with either al Qaida or the Mahdi army. My point is that the Democrats' message that the US is universally hated in Iraq is incredibly inaccurate.