I took a little bit of flak last week when I speculated that certain Republican ideologues might actually want to lose -- or at least not care whether they make their party lose.

Whether or not such people are the Republican "base" -- and whether such a thing can even be defined -- are open questions.

But what about the Democratic base? Isn't it just as fair to ask who they are? Is the Democratic base the Michael Moore/Ted Rall, Marxist, antiwar, let's-make-America-lose-the-war faction? They certainly don't strike me as doing the Democratic Party any favors. They are at least as hated by ordinary voters as their Republican counterparts; perhaps more.

Forgetting for a moment the question of the religious right, the way this race is shaping up, the Republican base is finding succor with a group of retired Swift Boat veterans, while their Democrat equivalent finds it in Michael Moore and Fahrenheit 9/11.

Sorry, but I can't see much of a moral equivalence between these two. I think it's pretty tough to maintain (with a straight face) that military veterans who want this country to win its wars are the "equivalent" of people who oppose all things military and want their country to lose its latest war, just as they did the Vietnam War and the Cold War in all its aspects.

Logically, those are real, bona fide losers; certainly more so than Republicans whose ideological purity dooms their party to defeat.

Such a base could do far more damage to the Democrats than the Republican base could do to their side.

If the Democratic leadership had any sense, they'd keep them locked up (or least leashed and muzzled) between now and the election.

NOTE: I am at sea and I apologize for the lack of links in this post. This connection is slow and inefficient; so much so that I don't want to go into detail about it. (I'll be lucky to get this posted.)