The Democratic Party’s Bad Options

For Democratic strategists, 2014 is shaping up to look 1940 for the French generals.

It is reminiscent of the quandary faced by General Maurice Gamelin on the evening of May 15, 1940. Suddenly he realized that German panzer troops had broken through the supposedly impassable Ardennes.

French troops to the north were cut off and rendered useless, troops to the south were falling back in disarray on all sides, and no reserves were available between the front and Paris. “Yes,” he told the prime minister, “it means the destruction of the French Army.”

Now, analogies between military history and politics are never exact, and no one in American politics remotely resembles the Nazis. But there is some resemblance between the plight of General Gamelin and the plight of Democratic strategists in key Senate and congressional races this year.

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