An opening for "sober and street-smart Democrats"

It has been rumoured in recent days that President Bush was talked out of bombing al-Jazeera by Tony Blair at some point in the not-too-distant past. As loathesome as al-Jazeera is, I hope this isn't true. It would have struck a death blow to the ongoing efforts of pro-Western forces in getting moderate Arabs on side with their efforts to expand democray in the Middle East, and I would think that the tacticians in the White House would have realized that.

Whether this is true or not, given the ongoing blunders in the Iraq war (which I unabashedly support), one of my intellectual heroes Victor Davis Hanson suggests here that there is an opening for Biden-like Dems to provide that third option that Americans are looking for. What they need to do to get the Democrats back in power is pull a McCain while not being pompous, self-promoting, piss-inside-the-tent assholes about it. What I mean is to distance oneself from the more extreme elements of their party to get independents and disaffected members of the other party on side without rubbing it in the face of your party's base. However, given the fact that Dems seem to never miss an opportunity to never miss an opportunity, I'm not sure if that wing of the party has the balls to take that risk, for the reasons Hanson points out above.