The New York Times yesterday carried a front-page article entitled “As Democrats See Security Gains in Iraq, Tone Shifts.” The story details the rank cynicism of the Democratic presidential candidates, who—with the possible exception of Joe Biden—have tailored their presidential campaigns to a narrative of defeat in Iraq. Now that the tide unmistakably is turning for the better, Democrats seem to have found themselves in a quandary: their campaign slogans not only are embarrassingly incongruous with the facts on the ground, but also seem politically obsolescent. Now that American defeat in Iraq no longer is an inevitability—and thus, no longer a “victory” for partisans who view Iraq in terms of how it will affect the fortunes of the Bush administration, rather than contemplating what a defeat there might mean for the United States and its allies—the Democrats “are also turning to pocketbook concerns with new intensity as the nominating contests approach in January.” One wonders what the Democrats will do if “pocketbook concerns” like the economy and oil prices fare better in the coming months and they’re left with less and less to lament.

The Times article reveals that, regarding Iraq, of foremost concern to the Democrats is how the situation there will affect their political prospects:

“The politics of Iraq are going to change dramatically in the general election, assuming Iraq continues to show some hopefulness,” said Michael E. O’Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who is a supporter of Mrs. Clinton’s and a proponent of the military buildup. “If Iraq looks at least partly salvageable, it will be important to explain as a candidate how you would salvage it—how you would get our troops out and not lose the war. The Democrats need to be very careful with what they say and not hem themselves in.”

O’Hanlon is correct in predicting that the Democrats—none of whom supported the troop surge, which has led to the positive gains in and around Baghdad—will have a tough time waging a campaign on the supposed failure of Iraq if the situation there proves “at least partly salvageable” come November of next year. And certainly it would be nice to hear something more constructive than mere defeatism coming from the mouths of Democratic candidates. Yet will voters trust a Democratic nominee to explain how they “would salvage” Iraq, especially in light of the fact that said nominee inevitably will have opposed from the very start and decried every step of the way the very strategy that got us to the present moment?

This situation (in which good news must be, at best, ignored and, at worst, distorted) poses a difficult problem for the antiwar Left in general and the Democrats in particular, and brings to mind the latest offering from Christopher Hitchens, who, while readily acknowledging that the good news out of Iraq may prove ephemeral, last week argued that:

What worries me about the reaction of liberals and Democrats is not the skepticism, which is pardonable, but the dank and sinister impression they give that the worse the tidings, the better they would be pleased. The latter mentality isn’t pardonable and ought not to be pardoned, either.

Given his own political odyssey, Hitchens is quite familiar with this sort of crass anti-Americanism. Wishing for America’s defeat at the hands of whatever enemy wearing an “anti-imperialist” mantle it happens to face is a longstanding article of faith amongst many of his erstwhile comrades on the Left. The times and conflicts may have changed dramatically since the days Hitchens was an unreconstructed Marxist, but the enemy—American power—remains, apparently, the same.