JONATHAN CHAIT writes in the New Republic that "at a moment when the[Democratic] party is casting about for a leader to define it against a popular president and [Sen. John] McCain [of Arizona] is casting about for a home after his virtual expulsion from the GOP, there is an obvious solution to both dilemmas: John McCain ought to become a Democrat - and a presumptive front-runner for their party's presidential nomination in 2004."
I don't so presume, but Mr. McCain does have an indispensable asset that four of the six "potential Democratic presidential contenders" the Associated Press named recently don't have.
The six are Al Gore, Sens. John Edwards, John Kerry, Joseph Lieberman and Tom Daschle, and Rep. Richard Gephardt.
By "indispensable asset" I mean a home base below the Mason-Dixon line. Only Mr. Gore of Tennessee and Mr. Edwards of North Carolina have it.
Mr. Kerry of Massachusetts, Mr. Lieberman of Connecticut and Mr. Daschle of South Dakota don't even come close. Mr. Gephardt of Missouri lives in a district that is technically just south of the latitude 39 degrees 43 minutes along which the famous boundary between Maryland and Pennsylvania runs, but I'm not talking surveying here.
The Mason-Dixon line is not just the boundary that settled an 18th century dispute between Maryland and Pennsylvania. It's a metaphor for a divided nation. In the 1820s, it began to be used in political speech for the North-South conflict.
It was symbolically extended west along the southern boundaries of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, then Missouri, and, as the nation's westering continued, on the straight line on the map now forming the northern boundaries of Oklahoma, New Mexico and Arizona, then projected on to include the population centers of southern Nevada and California.
Since 1964, in 10 straight presidential elections no candidate from above the Mason-Dixon Line has won. In four of those elections both major party candidates were from the 20 states below the line. In the other six, candidates from below opposed candidates from above.
In 1968, Richard Nixon of California defeated Minnesota's Hubert Humphrey. In 1972, Mr. Nixon defeated South Dakota's George McGovern. In 1984, California's Ronald Reagan defeated Minnesota's Walter Mondale. In 1988, Texan George H.W. Bush defeated Massachusetts' Michael Dukakis.
