Amid all the speculation about whether Democrats will regain a majority in the Senate in November, it’s worth remembering that the politician heading up that effort is New York’s own senior senator, Charles Schumer. Inside Friday’s Wall Street Journal was a highly illuminating article in which Mr. Schumer, the chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which raises and allocates huge amounts of campaign cash, described himself and his counterpart on the House side, Rep. Rahm Emanuel, as “trying to be the generals.” Quoth General Schumer: “This is a war.”

His metaphor was a dagger aimed at the heart of those many moderate and independent-minded Americans who want to fight a war on Islamic extremist terrorists, a war on cancer, a war on poverty — but not a war on Republicans. Mr. Schumer is described further in the article as among those arguing that the Democratic Party should keep its agenda secret from the voters. “For more than a year, Democrats debated what platform to have for 2006, or whether to have one at all. Mr. Schumer was among those mostly content to bash Mr. Bush,” the Journal reported.The newspaper quoted General Schumer as saying, “For us to put out a big range of ideas gives Republicans a target and gets the message off George Bush.”

General Schumer is a lot of things, but he’s not stupid. So if he wants to keep the Democratic Party’s ideas secret from the American people in a closely fought election, it just may be that he realizes how unpopular his party’s ideas are with the American people. The Democrats want to cut and run in Iraq, retreat into a defensive crouch in the war on terror while making good relations with France the top priority in American foreign policy, impose huge tax increases on American businesses and families, and appoint judges who are soft on violent criminals but easy on ambulance-chasing plaintiff’s lawyers. With those kinds of ideas dominating his party, it’s no wonder General Schumer wants to keep them a secret from the voters.