PLAYING FOR LEASTER? Does a political party benefit more by losing or by winning? Several commentators on the Presidential election have suggested that a loss would have a salutary effect, although the effect varies by party and by observer.

On the Democratic side, the tension will be between the party's left and its center. Professor Althouse has found a New York Times forum in which Adam Nagourney contemplates the effect of a Kerry-Edwards loss. That effect might be either a return to the McGovern-Mondale-Gore 2000 themes or a return to the Kennedy-Carter 1976-Clinton themes. There are voices urging a left turn. Mitch at Shot in the Dark comments on a Mark Hertsgaard column highlighting the voices on the left. Mr Berg's take: Bring it.

Liberalism as we know it grew over the course of forty years, from the New Deal through the war. Both spawned an America, and a generation pf Americans, with deep faith in their government's ability to solve problems - and the ability to ignore the unintended consequences of the government's power. The Democrat party became the party of statist solutions - under the likes of Truman and Kennedy and Humphrey, statism coupled with the great exceptionalistic vision of America. The Republicans of the day - Eisenhower, Nixon, and a whole generation of Minnesota Republicans - on the other hand became the party of exceptionalistic vision and slightly-less statist solutions.

Mark Steyn, although he has a different thesis, makes the same observation about the folly of a left turn.

So this is no time to vote for Europhile delusions. The Continental health and welfare systems John Kerry so admires are, in fact, part of the reason those societies are dying. As for Canada, yes, under socialized health care, prescription drugs are cheaper, medical treatment's cheaper, life is cheaper. After much stonewalling, the Province of Quebec's Health Department announced this week that in the last year some 600 Quebecers had died from C. difficile, a bacterium acquired in hospital. In other words, if, say, Bill Clinton had gone for his heart bypass to the Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal, he would have had the surgery, woken up the next day swimming in diarrhea and then died. It's a bacterium caused by inattention to hygiene -- by unionized, unsackable cleaners who don't clean properly; by harassed overstretched hospital staff who don't bother washing their hands as often as they should. So 600 people have been killed by the filthy squalor of disease-ridden government hospitals. That's the official number. Unofficially, if you're over 65, the hospitals will save face and attribute your death at their hands to "old age" or some such and then "lose" the relevant medical records. Quebec's health system is a lot less healthy than, for example, Iraq's.

One thousand Americans are killed in 18 months in Iraq, and it's a quagmire. One thousand Quebecers are killed by insufficient hand-washing in their filthy, decrepit health care system, and kindly progressive Americans can't wait to bring it south of the border. If one has to die for a cause, bringing liberty to the Middle East is a nobler venture and a better bet than government health care.

That left turn, dear Democrats, leads directly to the wilderness. Or is Mr Steyn being polemical, and is he missing the fault lines in the Republican coalition? Those exist, although Elisabeth Bumiller suggests the Republicans will simply suck it up and move on. Perhaps not. Reason's Julian Sanchez sees an opportunity for the libertarians among the Republicans in a change at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

A Kerry win might let [small-government conservatives] have their cake and eat it, too: The larger-government faction currently in the saddle would take blame for the loss, while the small-government faithful could cross the aisle to support pay-as-you-go reforms, which Kerry would be under pressure to follow through on.

That unwieldy Republican coalition has been the great unspoken hope of many observers on the Left. Thomas Frank's What's The Matter With Kansas (details or compare prices) hopes for a split between the cultural Republicans and the libertarians, as he expects that development to send the blue-collar cultural Republicans back to their natural home as Democratic voters. (Perhaps, although some Clement Zablockis and Henry Jacksons to vote for would help.) Frank's book is too polemical to be convincing. I am left with the suspicion that he is disappointed with the Republicans for not being admitted, as were some of his richer neighbors, to an Eastern college or to pledge a prominent fraternity, which he refers to as the "upper reaches of the sex cartel" (that's at page 155, you could look it up.) Another book on a related topic, The Right Nation: Conservative Power in America (details or compare prices) presents a British perspective on the distinct features of U.S. style conservatism, and, although it notes the cleavages between the cultural conservatives and the libertarians, the chapter titled "The Melancholy Long Withdrawing Roar of Liberalism" ought to be read and understood by advocates of the left turn for the Democrats or the Republicans.

(As an aside, and completing the comparisons: Right Nation also offers a better treatment of the vast right wing conspiracy financed by five families than Kansas. The money from the Kochs, Bradleys, Scaife, and the like has been helpful, but without ideas and resonance among the voters the return on that investment would be small indeed.)