When two smart liberals in D.C. both decide that the only hope for their party is drafting a Republican for the presidency, the real state of the Democrats could hardly be more brutally exposed. For what it’s worth, I think Jon Chait and Josh Green are engaging in wishful thinking. On abortion and affirmative action alone, McCain has much less of a chance of becoming a Democratic nominee than Colin Powell (in reverse) ever had of becoming a Republican nominee. (And at least Powell was already in the party.) Moreover, if McCain were to perform Clintonian pirouettes on these issues, he would erase his cenral attraction to voters: his ‘straight-talking’ conviction politics. Maybe events, i.e. the evisceration of the Democrats’ funding base after campaign finance reform, will prove me wrong, and they’ll be desperate to have anyone who can raise the sizzle factor among their candidates. But I doubt it, and I like McCain far too much to want him to erase his long-standing loyalty to his party to be eclipsed by being wooed by a bunch of desperate Washington lefties. But think about what this little gambit really says about the Dems right now. They have acknowledged that a president they still routinely describe as a moron, a tool of corporate interests, and an inarticulate boob is all but unbeatable by anyone in their ranks. This is a party, remember, that had to win back the Senate by a Republican defection, and now it wants to win back the White House the same way. The truth is, the only people actually excited about the current Democratic Party’s domestic and foreign policy ideas are Republicans yearning for the excitement of conversion. If I were McCain, I’d remember Evelyn Waugh’s line, when asked, as a fading Catholic, whether he would join the Church of England. “I may have lost my faith,” he replied. “But I haven’t lost my mind.” Stay sane, John. Stay sane.

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