A while ago, William Kristol caught hell from many liberals for his twisting a phrase used to defend Joseph McCarthy into an attack on the Democrats:

There are plenty of legitimate grounds to criticize the Bush administration's foreign policy. But the American people, whatever their doubts about aspects of Bush's foreign policy, know that Bush is serious about fighting terrorists and terrorist states that mean America harm. About Bush's Democratic critics, they know no such thing.

I'd prefer to push different buttons - ones that will enrage certain liberals even more than a McCarthyite phrase. Remember the war-cry of Anita Hill's supporters in the Clarence Thomas hearings in 1991, when the insensitivity of the Democrat-controlled Senate Judiciary Committee somehow proved that Republicans "just don't get it?"
Well, most of the Democratic presidential candidates just don't get it.
I could be convinced that the policies of George W. Bush have been counterproductive in the war on terror. I could be convinced that the war on Iraq was a bad idea. I could be convinced that we're not doing the right things on homeland security.
But convincing me intellectually is only part of the battle. You (addressing the 9 Democratic candidates) have to convince me that you'd actually do better. And before I'll be convinced of that, I need to be convinced that you actually get it.
"Getting it" means that you understand that the most important question facing America today, and probably for the forseeable future, is whether untold thousands of people - like me - will go to work in places like Manhattan and never go home to their families, because a nuclear weapon was detonated by genocidal maniacs whose entire raison d'etre is to kill us for who we are.
Howard Dean's entire campaign is built on a rejection of that premise. For other candidates like John Kerry, basing a campaign on criticizing everything President Bush has done -including those things that Kerry voted for - is also a symptom of "not getting it." As I said, I could be convinced that Bush's policies may be wrong and counterproductive. But given a choice between someone who actually understands the threat we face and someone who does not, it's pretty reasonable to go with the one who actually "gets it." And I think many others will come to the same conclusion.
Andrew Sullivan says it well:

No democracy wants to believe it is under dire threat; no one wants the abnormality to endure; no one wants to absorb the truth that the war is still in its infancy and that greater atrocities lie ahead, unless we act forcefully to pre-empt them and build the kind of societies in the Middle East that are alone guarantees of our and their future peace and stability. I have made plenty of criticisms of this president; and will do so again. But he's currently the only leader in this country who actually gets the depth of our predicament and the need for innovative, enterprising and ruthless action to improve it. The paradox is that the more he succeeds and the more the threat of terror recedes, the more his opponents will take the calm as evidence that nothing much has to be done, that nothing much has been done, that America, by acting, is the real source of world conflict, and that retreat and amnesia are the cure-alls.