One of the hallmarks of delusional thinking is the way all evidence tends to the same conclusion. For Third Way and other Fromsphere satellites, victory and defeat equally vindicate their views. Clinton's victories show just how right From and Co. were, but then, Gore's and Kerry's defeats also show just how right From and Co. are -- even though Gore and Kerry ran campaigns right out of the From playbook.
Indeed, it's quite difficult to imagine how much more blood the Fromniks could possibly want from the Democratic turnip. What is the point in this ongoing beating of a dead horse, or rather a dead donkey? What more do these people want?
Third Way's middle-class projectionists, as usual, give us little in the way of specifics, apart from a rather clear advocacy of increased militarism -- though here again, with the needle pretty well pegged, how much room is there for improvement, in Third Way's sense of that term?
It's difficult to avoid the impression that Third Way and its ilk are operating very much like management consultants who have been called in by a failing business, desperate to arrest the decline of its fortunes. Anybody who has made his living in the corporate world knows the type. They have a certain glossy technocratic assurance and glib mastery of the buzzword-du-jour, but it's all cheeseburger-cheeseburger and no-Coke-Pepsi: under the bright packaging their stock in trade always amounts to the conventional wisdom of the day. And conventional wisdom is always to copy the market leader, whether it's Wal-Mart or the Republican Party.