Bill Clinton likes to be called Elvis, but he was no rock star as a kid. In his new book, he describes himself as a fat, awkward, unpopular mama’s boy. This helps explain Clinton’s adult appeal. Today’s core Democrats are, to a large extent, people who have seen themselves as victims since their days in the schoolyard. Clinton never bothered these kids at recess. He was one of them. George Bush, though, was on the other side – a rich boy with a sneer and a swagger and a casual way of bestowing nasty, life-long nicknames. At least that’s how they see him. This is one reason Florida 2000 rankles the Democrats. It’s not that they lost, it’s that they knew they’d lose. Once more, Bush and his posse turned them upside down and shook the lunch money out of their pockets. It’s hard to forgive that kind of humiliation. Ironically, until the Vietnam War, the Democratic Party was the home of America’s hard men. Back then, unions provided muscle. So did the Mafia – Sam Giancana reputedly helped Joe Kennedy’s boy steal the 1960 election in Chicago. Down South, the Ku Klux Klan was part and parcel of the Democratic Party. But organized labor, grown small and respectable, no longer has armies of goons to deploy. Only the doddering Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia remains as a reminder of the Democratic-klan alliance. These days, Southern rednecks (and Northern rednecks) vote Republican. As for the mob, try to picture Tony Soprano doing business with John Forbes Kerry. The Democrats have lost the streets of America, just as they once lost its playgrounds. This makes them uneasy and more than a little paranoid. Tune into Air America anytime, and you can hear that Bush’s bullyboys are planning to declare martial law and cancel the next election or that John Ashcroft’s G-men are throwing people into dungeons without even a trace. Fearful people badly need tough-guy champions. Kerry has parlayed this yearning into the Democratic nomination. The party of gun control, multilateral diplomacy and peace now thrills to being led by a bona fide war hero, a man whose adolescent boast is that he knows something about killing and whose campaign slogan invites the Bush bullies to “bring it on!” The same bellicose spirit has infected the Democrats’ celebrity wing. Al Franken was a high school wrestler — don’t mess with him! And Michael Moore’s a brawler from the gritty streets of Flint, Mich., ready to take on all comers. Such muscular posturing has been greeted by America’s Recess Survivors with enthusiasm mixed with skepticism. Memories of the schoolyard are still fresh. Franken may have been on the wrestling team but he’s still remembered as a nice Jewish boy with a smart mouth. As for Moore, he is Beavis in middle age, a not very brave, not very bright slacker with a gift for cheap sarcasm. It turns out his idea of “fighting” is threatening critics of his film with legal action. Moore once said that if more passengers on the 9-11 flights had been black, the terrorists would have gotten their butts kicked. This is not his fantasy alone. It is a chronic condition known as Panther Delusion Syndrome, in which tough blacks act as bodyguards for virtuous whites. But even severe PDS cases find it hard to imagine the homies of Bed-Stuy and Harlem hitting the bricks on behalf of Michael Moore – or John Kerry. It won’t be necessary, of course. America’s not really in the political or cultural street fight the Playground Democrats imagine. Moore’s right to make movies is secure. The next election will be held on schedule. Maybe Kerry will win. If not, the Democrats will have to wait until 2008 for a real macho savior: Hillary Clinton.