Beleaguered Democrats

Conrad’s cartoon (Aug. 23) comparing Paul Tsongas and several unannounced but possible Democratic presidential candidates to the Soviet “gang of eight” seems off the mark to me both in fact and in spirit.

The Soviet coup plotters were a group of high government and military officials trying to stave off what has become a radical insurgency movement. This description doesn’t fit ex-Sen. Paul Tsongas or any other possible Democratic candidate; the goal of all of them is replace an existing government. It’s a fact that they are the outsiders, not the insiders.

The plotters were reactionaries opposing a liberalizing tide in their society. The Democrats are liberals trying to arouse a long-dormant spirit of liberalism in America, without any success so far.

If we are going to compare our politics to Soviet politics, it seems to me that a better comparison would be our present circumstances to the Soviet Union during the Brezhnev years. The Soviet Union in those years had a self-satisfied government with no effective political opposition; the Brezhnev government refused to address the problem of underlying decay throughout Soviet society. Sound familiar?

WILL NETTLESHIP, Fullerton