On Democrats and Pollywogs

In which the author examines the curious relationship of today's Democratic Candidates to a pool of land-locked frog wannabes...

We polliwoggle.
We polliwiggle.
We shake in lakes,
Make wakes,
And wriggle.
We quiver,
We shiver,
We jiggle,
We jog.
We're yearning
To turn ourselves
Into a frog.
-- Douglas Florian

Thanks to the usual conjunction of overweening ambition and a Sahara of empty airtime, the American public has been sentenced to have its teeth set aflame with great regularity until the motley collection of Democratic primaries puts paid to the current Peanut gallery of Presidential hopefuls. Yes, due to the malign convergence of a media with far too much time and far too little news, we are doomed to be exposed for months without end to nearly a dozen Democratic candidates with way too much time and far too few policies. The result will be much like watching pollywogs contend for resources as the heat of the approaching elections shrinks their pond.

Since the news, much to the distress of serious people, always seems to focus 'where the action is,' this is the season where all electoral action is to be found watching the gelid mass of Democratic pollywogs struggle to transform themselves into one gigantic frog that the party hopes the electorate will kiss into Princedom come November, 2004. It has not been a pretty picture and it is going to get worse.

In the end, it will look a lot like pollywog ponds towards the end of a long, hot summer day, and smell about the same. But it is going to be "where the action is," and we're going to find it hard to avoid watching it -- even if the only sane response to watching the twentieth stump speech of Howard Dean, Wesley Clark, or Al Sharpton is poking out your pupils with red-hot needles.

When I was a boy I lived in a rural town in Northern California. Behind our house was a fallow field with a small stream cutting through it. In that stream, at certain times of the year, frogs mated and laid eggs which, in time, became pollywogs (aka "tadpoles"). Collecting a group of tadpoles was a simple matter of quick hands or a small net. Either way, my brother and I, in the manner of wanton boys, would collect a dozens in a jar on idle summer afternoons, and transfer them to a small pond we'd scooped out of the dirt a yard or so from the main stream and filled with water. Since there were a lot of pollywogs in the stream we always had a lot of pollywogs in our ponds. Once there, we'd sit down and watch what they did.

The pond always seemed to support a few pollywogs in fine style. They'd wriggle and wiggle about freely and dive into the cool mud. They seemed, for a time, happy in their new environment. They were free of all the challenges and dangers of the main stream. They didn't have to buck the current. They didn't have to worry about the large bass that seemed to hoover the stream bottom for pollywogs whenever they felt a bit peckish. The pond's water even had a warmer, more languid feel to it. It promised to support slime and pollywogs love slime. And they had the undivided attention of a small, but fascinated, group of supporters who had brought them together. The artificial pond to the side of the main stream seemed pollywog paradise.

Ah, but paradise on earth is a fleeting thing -- especially on a hot summer day. As the day wore on, the sun began to shrink the pool. (Sometimes aided by my brother and I with a couple of jars and the impatience of small boys.) As the pool got smaller and the water more shallow, the pollywogs began to find themselves in a pickle.

Less water meant less room. They began to bump up against each other. Even less water started to threaten them with annihilation. They began to crowd together with the weakest being forced, inexorably, towards the surface and the strongest starting to burrow as deep into the mud as they could.

If they could have found their way back to the main stream from the pond, they all could have survived. But they had been removed from the main stream by their erstwhile supporters and placed in the pond. They didn't know the way back and, by that time, lacked the means to get there. If they had been full grown frogs, they'd have reached safety with a few well chosen leaps, but they hadn't yet been transformed and so, even though they didn't know it, time had run out for them when they had let themselves be captured by those with a special interest in them and taken from the main stream.

Sometimes my brother and I would take pity on the mass of pollywogs now lumped together in a muddy, gelid mass, but often times it would get late in the afternoon and our mother would call us home to dinner. And so, we'd run off to a good dinner and a blameless sleep while our most of our pollywogs continued their metamorphosis into compost.

The next day we'd go out to the pool and glance with only a momentary interest at the previous day's pollywog pond. At times there would be a few left alive gasping and throbbing in a half-cup of water. We might take those and put them back in the main stream, but most of the time we'd just kick dirt over them to stop the smell, dig a new pond a few yards further down the main stream, scoop up some more pollywogs and begin anew.

And so it goes in this run-up in what has to be the most contested struggle for the Democratic nomination in memory -- which will be followed in short order by what will most likely be the most uncontested Presidential election in memory.

A lot of main stream commentary has now flowed over us about the struggle of the Democratic party to make itself acceptable to a wide majority of Americans. But this, to my mind, is not fresh water but hogwash.

The Democratic Party as it was in its salad days no longer exists. What we have instead is a rag-tag collection of extremely liberal and frankly leftist interest groups that have managed to hijack the name of the party for their own uses. The genius of Bill Clinton was to recognize that the Democratic Party had ceased to function as either Democratic or as a Party, and to heave enough towards the center in order to be elected once, and keep it centered enough to re-elect him to a second term. Without a Bill Clinton in office these last few years, the real nature of the Democratic Party as it evolved beneath the Clinton camouflage has reemerged to take control and to send up the pile of pollywogs that currently contend.

But what are they contending for? Surely it cannot be the Presidency since, no matter what current polls may say, there is no candidate among the pollywogs that can become anything other than a frog. And a frog will not defeat George W. Bush in 2004. The only rational goal any candidate can hope to achieve will be the leadership of the Democratic Party through becoming its chosen but hopeless nominee. And of the most likely victors, Kerry, Dean, and (only possibly as of this writing) Clark, none of these can be seen to have the vision or the character to hop the Democratic Party out of its shrinking pollywog pond and back into the main stream.

Indeed, the only hope currently on the national scene that could return the Party to the main stream and back into the Oval Office is the one Democrat that is known to have kissed a frog that magically turned into a Prince -- Hillary Clinton. The fact that her Prince reverted to a very large frog is beside the point in politics. The kissing of the Frog Prince is all that counts to today's desperate Democrats.

The only question for Hillary, who has been wise enough so far to stay out of the Pollywog Pond, is whether or not she will be foolish enough to challenge Bush in 2004 and lose, or will wisely wait until 2008 when the water will be less likely to dry up around her as she begins to find her way back to the main stream with a hop, skip, jump.

Posted by Vanderleun at September 29, 2003 12:26 PM