The left then and now

Hedrick Hertzberg, attending YearlyKos, makes the following acute observation about this generation's antiwar crowd versus the one that protested Vietnam:

I think the difference between today’s left and yesterday’s is partly explained by the difference between the wars that have energized them. Vietnam was, as Bob Dole might say, a “Democrat war.” You couldn’t protest it just by putting your energies into electing Democrats, and of course you couldn’t do it by trying to elect Republicans, who liked the war even more. You had to go to the left of the Dems, and if you hadn’t happened to have already acquired a moral/political compass, you might keep going till you ended up at the feet of Chairman Mao. This war is an all-Republican affair. And this generation, thank God, is perfectly content to stick with Chairman Howard.

The Republicans are trying desperately to turn assign the blame for the Iraq catastrophe more widely (or, ideally, to pin the blame entirely on the "Defeaticrats") but this war is transparently Mr. Bush's war that the effort is almost certainly bound to fail. Indeed the effort to do so seems increasingly farcical, in the "18th Brumaire" sense of the word.