The Democrats are in big trouble. In fact, I foresee a landslide victory on the presidential level that will utterly dishearten the leftists' movement for years to come.

Why? Because today the Democrats are wholly controlled not by reasonable people whose ideology is basically the same as the rest of America, with differences defined by degree (for example, the vast majority of Americans believe in at least some socialist welfare programs, the difference being what and how much). Instead the powers within the Democrat Party are radical leftists, people whose vision of not just the issues but of man are diametrically opposed to both the beliefs of the American people (and have led to disaster -- both overseas and in America -- wherever they have been implemented).

Further, this radical left has no use for "moderate" Democrats (read: Joe Lieberman)and, in many ways, sees them in much the same way the Islamists see the apostate -- as even worse than the infidel.

Make no mistake, while primary politics has always seen candidates take positions more to the left or to the right of where they end up in the general election campaign, these leftist ideologues will not allow their candidate to "move to the center" once the general election campaign begins in earnest.

While the betrayal of Joe Lieberman is an indication of the power the radical leftists hold over the Democrat Party, what is truly telling about it was not just that the radical left betrayed him, but so, too, did his friends and colleagues who believed, for their own sake, that it was better to lose in a seat in the Senate (and thereby risk losing control of the Senate) than it was to buck the far-leftist powers.

It is not unusual for the "amateurs" -- those whose job will still be there whichever way the election turns out (like Michael Moore, Sean Penn, etc), to not care about the realities of getting elected and to pursue a wholly ideological end. Liberals are VERY good at holding onto their beliefs when THEY have nothing to lose (see Al Gore and global warming as HE spews pollution at twenty times the average amount).

What is telling is that it was the PROS -- the Senators and Congressman -- who betrayed Lieberman making the calculated choice that their own future was better thrown in with the radicals than with their friend, colleague and multi-term Senator.

Yet even further evidence of how deeply in control of the Democrat Party are the radical leftists was the elevation of Howard Dean to the most powerful position in the Democrat Party.

Once again, the choice facing the professionals was between the reasonable and rather centrist Evan Bayh and the arguably insane, and virulently anti-American Howard Dean. That the amateurs would side with Dean was, of course, a foregone conclusion. But it wasn't the amateurs who gave Dean all of that power, it was the professionals.

So where does this leave the Democrats as we enter the 2008 presidential campaign? It leaves them in big trouble.

It looks like, despite all of her advantages (name, the most vicious and devoid of conscience campaign team) Hillary Rodham-Clinton is in serious trouble. Her competition? A wholly inexperienced, one-term senator whose campaign platform is comprised of meaningless slogans such as "hope" and "change."

Why is Ms. Rodham-Clinton in so much trouble? Because she miscalculated on a number of levels.

First, she thought that her nomination was a foregone conclusion. After all, who else was out there? Besides, her husband is the consummate manipulator and she had all those leftist friends in Hollywood kicking in millions and so on.

Thinking she had it all wrapped up she moved to the center as if she were already running a general election campaign. But the radical leftists have no use for a reasonable person (again, see Lieberman and Bayh)and, because they are the amateurs, have no vested interest in victory.

If Rodham-Clinton now TRIES to move to the left to win back the "love" of the hate-America-always crowd, she risks both reinforcing the (rightly earned) image of someone who has no beliefs and is just personally desperate for power to validate her existence and to lose whatever number of normal people might have been duped by her seeming reasonableness, running, as she was, more to the center.

That she is being abandoned by longtime friends -- not to mention the party regulars -- is not surprising, then.

Rodham-Clinton also miscalculated in thinking that this was 1992 and not 2007. Remember, back in 1992 Bill could be all things to all people because "the truth" was controlled by a handful of gate-keepers, all in lockstep with the leftist agenda. Bill could say one thing while campaigning in the Midwest, utterly contradict himself that evening at a fundraiser in Hollywood, secure in the knowledge that the same people who forged documents to help John Kerry a decade-later, would cover his tracks for him on the campaign trail.

Since 1992, however, Fox News has broken the stranglehold on information previous doled out at the whim of the leftist pretty-boys in New York and Atlanta, while center-right talk radio has grown and the blogesphere has democratized (lower case "d") the dissemination of information.

Besides, the leftist media has no use for Ms. Rodham-Clinton, either. These folks who continually misreport the state of the war against Islamic fascism, won't even call the terrorists "terrorists," and who in every way agree with the most radical agenda of the Democrat Party, have no love for Clinton since she attempted to move to the center.

This leaves, as Ann Coulter calls him, B. Hussein Obama, as the star candidate for the leftists -- one smart enough to say nothing, stand for nothing, and let Hillary continue to plummet.

But this won't work in the general election. While the people may want "change" they are not stupid. A one term senator who says nothing and stands for nothing will not be able to beat real candidates with real positions -- positions that the radical leftists may not like, but the American people do.