PESSIMISM. I think I'll take Garance's open question to the Tapped community as an opportunity to express my own abiding pessimism in the Democratic field. I think we're in an odd, if temporarily satisfying moment, wherein the Democratic candidates are much more appealing to the Left than the Republican candidates are to the Right. That said, I actually think McCain, Giuliani, and Romney are all quite strong general election candidates, a fact being obscured by their uncertain navigation of the primaries. Now, maybe it'll indeed be true that the Republicans are so squeezed by the demands of the base that they can't unveil their heresies and triangulations in the general, but I doubt it. Someone will win the Republican nomination, and the natural tribalism of political parties will kick in and he'll have the freedom of a general election candidate to solidify his base by attacking the other party while swinging to the center to actually gain votes. Politicians are merrily craven that way. And my larger concern is that Americans tend to prefer dovishness from hawks, and so a chastened McCain who declares the surge a failure after he wins the Republican nomination sounds to me like exactly the sort of politician Americans flock to when they want to end a war. --Ezra Klein
