How strong is the anti-war left? None other than the Nation’s Katha Pollitt inadvertently supplies this answer in a piece begging former icon Cindy Sheehan not to run for Congress:
“Second, Sheehan’s run is futile. There’s a place for outsider candidates, even long shots. Ned Lamont lost his Senate race in Connecticut, but first he won the primary election and he ran to win. Moreover, even though he lost the race, he made his point: his candidacy put the Democrats – and the media – on notice that anti-war feeling was far deeper, and anti-war opponents far better organized, than they had believed. Pelosi has been a cautious – too cautious – leader, and if a left-er candidate could take her seat, fine. But let me go out on a limb here: Sheehan has no chance of defeating her, and still less chance of moving into an open seat because the impeachment of Bush and Cheney has moved Speaker Pelosi, next in line, into the White House. Sheehan’s candidacy is less like that of Lamont than it is like the barely visible symbolic runs of Jonathan Tasini for the Senate (against Hillary Clinton) and Stanley Aronowitz for governor of New York. She’ll get more media than those gentlemen, because she and Pelosi are national celebrities, but I doubt she’ll come much closer to victory. Thus, instead of showing the Democrats how strong is the threat from the left, it will show them how weak it is.”