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Wednesday, September 14, 2005

Re: Come Home, America

Posted by on September 14 at 12:07 PM

George McGovern’s “Come Home, America” speech also included cheesy lines like this:

And let us be joyful in the homecoming. For: “This land is your land, this land is my land. From California to the New York Island. From the redwood forests to the Gulf Stream waters. This land was made for you and me.”

I’m not suggesting the Democrats engage in this kind of dumb kumbaya politics. Read Byrd’s speech. He’s talking about real issues Iraq, Katrina through the prism of a return to fundamental American values. And here’s the best part. If you want to read “Come Home, America” as a call for immediate withdrawal from Iraq, you can. That will make the far left happy. If you want to read it as a call for a return to reality-based leadership, but a call that stops short of demanding total immediate withdrawal from Iraq, you can do that too. That reading will make the rest of the left happy.

This far-left, center-left divide is one Democrats have been struggling to straddle, and this kind of rhetoric allows them to do it.