Donner Party Democrats

[Woodmonkey]

Donner Party Democrats

When they set out, it all looked so bright — away to the West, to the Denver convention, nothing but blue skies ahead. They had a continent to cross, a nation to convince, and they vowed to do it in a way that had never been done before.

They moved briskly across the plains of the Bush presidency. There was the scarecrow president who didn’t know the price of fuel or the ways of war. Flapping in the wind, he pointed one way, while 70 percent of the country wanted to go the other.

On to the arid side of the prairie, they passed one sunbaked skeleton after another — Larry Craig and his wide stance, Scooter Libby and his breach of trust, and a man from the Arabian Horse Association, Brownie. Each had the stench of yesterday on them.

Along the way, they moved by Mitt the Muddler, who couldn’t decide which way to go, and Rudy the Robo, muttering, “9/11, 9/11, 9/11.” Dining on squirrel was a guitar-plucking Huckabee, who at least knew how to keep folks entertained around the campfire.

These refugees from the other party had their nutty preacher, Pat Robertson, who blamed fellow Americans for the big attack. It was their fault, he said: the civil libertarians, the gays, the feminists brought this mass murder upon themselves.

Uphill now, through the high plains, and still the Dems held together. They would not be like that tragic Donner Party of 1846, feuding and scrapping. It would all be over before the snows were gone.

They shared their rations and steeled their will, convinced that one way or the other they would make history: a black man or a woman would lead them. They were Democrats doing the impossible: moving in one line, together.

Deep in the treeless expanse of the West, they came upon one of the stragglers from the other party: John McCain. Once, he had been a maverick. Now he looked old and worn and lost. His own party had left him for dead, he explained. Called him amnesty man.

He seemed harmless enough, saying he knew nothing about the economy, confused about who was fighting whom in a distant part of the world. They didn’t give him a second thought.

And then, as the snow piled high deep into March, the Dems turned on each other. One of their leaders had been hanging around the camp of another preacher man, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. — a nutball like Robertson, blaming America for bringing on the horrid attack. What is it with these men of God? Should have left them home.

The Dems grew raggedy, worn, desperate. Whereas the first Donner Party was bogged down in the snow of the high Sierra, these Dems could not get out of the Rockies. One faction wanted to declare it over, based on greater popular support. The other one wanted simply to stick around long enough, waiting for the rival to self-destruct.

Their former leader, Clinton the Elder, was kept on a leash — nothing but cards at night. He said he’d seen far worse in his time. “Will there be more animosity as this thing goes on? Yes.” That didn’t help.

Looking for leadership, they turned to a quiet man in the rear, a doctor from Vermont: Howard Dean. Do something, Doc! Scream! But he cowered, mumbling about do-overs and going back to Michigan or Florida.

At their lowest ebb, they looked back and again saw the straggler, McCain. He was stronger, walking with renewed vigor despite his age.

He was joined by a grizzled old cuss named Cheney. One strange hombre, Cheney had shot a man in the face. He’d forgotten that his country was a democracy. When he was told that two-thirds of the nation wanted to heed the founders’ advice and avoid prolonged foreign conflicts, he spit on the ground, and said, “So?”

His party was united. What had been hatred for McCain was now hatred for the other party’s preacher. They could direct all their historic resentments, their bound-up frustrations, against this preacher, the Rev. Wright. So long as they hissed and booed at his picture every night, they stayed together, saying the nastiest of things.

The original Donner Party made history for one reason: by eating their dead. Cannibalism — it was all they could do to stay alive.

These modern Dems press on, tearing into each other, crawling to get to the summit, still five months away, in the mile-high city. They are now ravenous with hunger, and it is starting to show.

Timothy Egan, a contributing columnist for The Times, writes Outposts, a column at nytimes.com. He is filling in for Bob Herbert, who is off today.

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