The good old days
Over at the WSJ's Opinion Journal, Donna Brazile and Timothy Bergreen:

Ms. Brazile, who served as the campaign manager for Gore 2000, is a political strategist and a member of the board of advisers of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a think tank on terrorism. Mr. Bergreen served in the State Department during the Clinton administration and is the founder of Democrats for National Security.

weigh in with What Would Scoop Do? - Fellow Democrats, get serious about defense or get used to losing:

It was not always this way. Throughout much of the last century, Democrats were the party of strong defense and muscular internationalism, while Republicans were often the party of isolationism. Traditional Democrats guided America through two world wars and were the architects of our policy of containment against the Soviet Union. From Franklin Roosevelt's insistence on the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany and imperial Japan in World War II, through Harry Truman's refusal to acquiesce to the North Korean invasion of the South or the Soviet attempt to starve the Western powers out of Berlin, to John F. Kennedy's steely-eyed showdown with Nikita Khrushchev during the Cuban Missile Crisis, to the pro-defense legislation of Sen. Scoop Jackson--the Democratic mentor of some of today's most prominent Republican hawks--the Democratic Party met the great challenges posed by the enemies of the Free World.

The Vietnam War split the Democrats as it did the nation, and by the early 1970s, the "peace wing" of the party had taken over. Ever since, Republicans haven't had to work terribly hard to win electoral success by portraying a string of Democrats from George McGovern to Michael Dukakis as weak on defense and hostile to the military. Our own fathers, one a World War II veteran, the other a veteran of the Korean War, both wonder what happened to the old Democratic Party that honored their service and did not shrink from a fight when it was in America's interest.

It's usually a chilly day in hell when I agree with Donna Brazile, but I'm of an age to remember the Democrat party before it was hijacked by the "Blame America First" crowd. There was plenty to fight elections over, but sucking up to foreign totalitarians was never on the table. Unfortunately, those days are 3 decades gone.