The Democrats have consistently refused to think coherently about the war unless and until we put them in charge of it. This overtly terroristic campaign (against the rest of us), a campaign which includes in many cases flirting with the enemy, goes to the heart of their one core objection to the war – that they are not running it.

Modern Democrats, being for the most part materially comfortable, are primarily about struggling to enhance their status. Status in society is often a zero-sum game (which is why they remain unaffected by appeals to recognize that economics is not a zero-sum game). The Democrats simply cannot allow the other party to acquire the status associated with having fought and won a war. The more the war looks like it might be won, the more desperate the efforts will become to redefine it as a ruinously expensive mistake.

It is crucial to understand that if war winning becomes an important source of status across our society then a lot of college professors, lawyers and desk-bound government employees would overnight become drab, uninspiring and uncool. Attractive young people would no longer listen to them uncritically. This is an excruciating form of death to these aging people, who live and breathe their carefully burnished self-image as heroic ‘activists’. That self-image is their investment of a lifetime, to be removed only from their cold dead hands.