The Democrats have a serious problem, half their base supports policies that are repulsive to Americans in general. The far left socialists, uber-liberal wing is stuck in the fantasy world of the early 1900’s and are all for repeating the disasters of the Soviet Union and those policies still dogging Europe (socialized medicine).

One of the recent ways the Democrats have tried to deal with the potentially self-destructive force in their midst is to put a moderate facade on their leadership. This strategy is lost to the house because the Dems have been slowly losing their base to the far left fanatics and now openly run the House. It is no surprise they have failed to move any legislation this year, and simply strut around frustrated the world or country doesn’t revolve around their brillian intellect.

In the Senate the tradition of covering up for the far left has remained, primarily because the Senate hosts more moderates still – since far lef fanatics like Kucinich and Pelosi and Waters couldn’t even hope to carry a whole state. But the facade doesn’t last, as the far left policies start flowing (like numerous votes to force a failure in Iraq even while the Surge was turning things around and purging al-Qaeda). The fact these moderates must get up and publically – and repeatedly – repeat the lame conceptual foundations of all liberal and socialist policies ends up turning their own constituents against them.

This is what happened with Tom Daschle in 2004, and could likely happen to Harry Reid in 2010:

The political headline of last week, “Reid’s popularity falls among Nevadans,” wasn’t all that surprising. Nevada’s never been particularly wild about Harry Reid. But he’s always managed to cobble enough of a constituency to ward off opponents, even if by the narrowest of margins.

The surprise was in the degree of voter disenchantment. The poll commissioned by the Las Vegas Review-Journal showed Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s unfavorable rating had moved past the 50 percent mark — 51 percent, to be precise. His favorable rating was 32 percent, 2 points lower than embattled, lame duck President George W. Bush.

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Let me spell out Harry’s problem. No one can win a statewide race in Nevada on a platform that appears anti-military, anti-family, anti-marriage, anti-religion, anti-free speech, pro-illegal immigration, pro-abortion, and pro-taxation. While Harry isn’t all of that personally, he clearly projects elements of them all when he’s doing the bidding of his party on the national stage.

Both parties are getting hammered because they are kowtowing to their more strident fringes and not looking for optimizing their positions in well thought out compromises. The endless finger-pointing and fringe policy race is getting old. The electorate KNOWS no one on Capitol Hill is even close to perfect or completely right. The day the people on the Hill realize this and act accordingly the sooner one party will get back into America’s good graces and take the lead.

BTW, it is impossible to lead when half the country will not follow where you want to go. The Dems are about to learn an ugly lesson in Presidential politics.

While she is winning wide support in nationwide samples among Democrats in the race for their party’s presidential nomination, half of likely voters nationwide said they would never vote for New York Sen. Hillary Clinton, a new Zogby Interactive poll shows.

Given the nature of the electorial college and the fact dems always poll more favorably than they ever produce in polls, this is a message the Dems will ignore. The message is don’t elect those who polarize and paralyze the nation, elect leaders who can heal and guide it.