Duelling banjos while Rome burns

Democratic supporters of Obama and Clinton appear to be doing their best to tear the Democratic party apart, at a time when the world needs Democrats to cleave together and consign the Republican party to political oblivion.

I use the phrase "duelling banjos" because for all intents and purposes, the three main candidates for President occupy near-identical positions on substantive issues.  From the point of view of what I (or most other observers outside the U.S.) can see, there isn't a wafer's difference between the candidates.  

And yet the level of deeply personal nastiness to which supporters of the candidates have descended, is having the effect not only of splitting the Democratic Party at what may be the most critical point in its modern history, but of sowing ill will and ill feeling towards both potential nominees among the independent and soft-Democrat voters that the Party needs not only to capture the Presidency, but destroy the Republicans down-ticket in November.

The office of U.S. President, as a result of the centralized presidential system and the fundamental importance of the U.S. in trying to forge any meaningful international agreements, is by far the most powerful person in the world.  People everywhere (I am not an American myself) all realize this.  The rest of the world is treating this election as an event of the utmost importance for both the immediate and long-term future of the entire globe.  

Not just the health of the planet, but the growth and survival of liberal culture, and even the survival of humans as a species, is imperiled as long as control over U.S. government and society rests in Republican hands.

As a result, you would expect that all good Democrats (and DKos is nothing if not an aggregation of really good Democrats) would take the opportunity to encourage pulling together and making positive, energizing contributions to the primary campaigns.

But we've all learned that if you give them the slightest opportunity, Democrats organize themselves into a circular firing squad.  40 years of near-continuous defeat, and near-constant erosion of the Democrat political base, and still Democrats persist in trying to avoid building goodwill towards each other.  And it's happening again.

Obama and Clinton (and John Edwards as well) are essentially occupying exactly the same position politically.  The positions being taken are practically indistinguishable from each other.  They are on the same side.  And yet the rhetoric of personal attack, of candidate against candidate, serves only to drive away neutral Democrats and independents from both.  The more each side insists that the other's candidate is imbued with personal failings that make them unacceptable as a Democratic President, the more the Republicans are aided and comforted.

Policy attacks from fellow Democrats are answerable, and the electorate expects those intra-party disagreements.  Attacks related to personal failings aren't - and they drive neutrals, undecideds and independents away.  Meanwhile, those of us overseas look on in despair at a party doing its best to self-destruct - and hand the White House (and maybe even control over the legislative arm) back to the Republicans we so despise.

Governments and persons elsewhere deal with the United States through the executive.  Eight years of Bush Doctrine has nearly wiped out the remaining goodwill that the rest of the world wants to feel - and now we are facing the prospect of an equally unilateralist McCain... or an apparently insane Mike Huckabee.

Don't do this to us, guys!  Get your act together!  (and come together!)  And let us all know what we can do to help!

Good luck to all the Democratic candidates and their supporters in the month ahead.