Anyway, since then Mark Steyn had an even better column dealing with the same issue and both gave me the title for this post. The following is Mark Steyn talking about the "Alternate Reality" AKA "The Planet Zongo" that Democratic Presidential candidates seem to be residents of: bq. Who's the odd one out here? The BBC, CBC and most of the European media have constructed an alternative universe and are content to frolic on its wilder shores. Time stands still in this world: Even though the confidently predicted civilian death tolls and humanitarian catastrophes never arrive, nobody minds. There's no reason why reality should ever intrude. bq. Unfortunately, Dean, Gephardt and about half the other Democratic candidates still live in the real world--or, more to the point, their would-be constituents do. These candidates are obliged to be, in Bill Clinton's words, ''politically viable.'' At the BBC and Le Monde and the Sydney Morning Herald, anti-Americanism is the New Universal Theory: It explains everything; it's the prism through which every event is viewed. But it's an unlikely strategy for American electioneering. One anti-Bush Democrat at a protest the other day carried a sign reading ''FRANCE WAS RIGHT!'' That's not a winning slogan, even in Vermont. bq. What happened this week is a foretaste of what the party can expect in the next 15 months: Reality will keep intruding, and if the Dems keep moving the goalposts ever more frantically, pretty soon they'll be campaigning from Planet Zongo. This week, Tom Daschle insisted that Odai and Qusai were all very well, but where was the Big Guy? Why hadn't that slacker Bush caught him yet? And here is what "Emperor Palpatine," that is House Majority Leader Tom Delay, had to say about the Democrats:

So in the interests of clarity, I have a simple message to pass along: the national Democrat party seems to have lost its marbles. Though they remain a potent electoral machine, armed with battalions of trial lawyers and entertainers, and their Grand Coalition of the Perpetually Partisan, they are no longer a serious force in the national debate. Their single organizing philosophy is an irrational, all-encompassing, broiling hatred of George W. Bush. They hate him for a million reasons. But most of all, Democrats hate the president because on every political issue of significance since he came into office, he has beaten them like rented mules. and The Democrats' problem is not a lack of patriotism. It's a lack of seriousness. They don't hate their country, they just refuse to lead it. I will never call the Democrat Party unpatriotic, but I will call their current leadership unfit to face the serious challenges of the 21st century. and Let's be real clear: If you take their comments to their logical conclusion, they're essentially calling our Commander in Chief, Benedict Arnold. Ridiculous as it sounds, the logical extension of the Democrat leadership's assertion is that President Bush is an international war criminal. If we are to take this nonsense seriously, THAT is how out of control the Democrats' rhetoric has become. But, you see, that's the whole point. The Democrats' accusations AREN'T meant to be taken seriously. Because they're unserious people. We're in the middle of a global conflict between good and evil and they're in the middle of a Michael Dukakis look-alike contest. They either don't understand or don't care that this is a time for serious leadership.

Watch closely this theme of "The Democrats are not serious about fighting the war. Republicans are going to beat Democrats "like rented mules" with it in the 2004 election. If recent polling here, here, and here is any indication. They will win big with it.