That was the party line when I was an extreme leftist many years ago, and nothing made me more uncomfortable with being an extreme leftist than that mindset. Christopher Hitchens believes the same mindset infects the Kerry campaign. He writes:

"If you calculate that only a disaster of some kind can save your candidate, then you are in danger of harboring a subliminal need for bad news. And it will show. What else explains the amazingly crude and philistine remarks of that campaign genius Joe Lockhart, commenting on the visit of the new Iraqi prime minister and calling him a 'puppet'? Here is the only regional leader who is even trying to hold an election, and he is greeted with an ungenerous sneer. The unfortunately necessary corollary of this—that bad news for the American cause in wartime would be good for Kerry—is that good news would be bad for him. Thus, in Mrs. Kerry's brainless and witless offhand yet pregnant remark [that she wouldn't be surprised to hear soon that Osama bin Laden has been captured], we hear the sick thud of the other shoe dropping. How can the Democrats possibly have gotten themselves into a position where they even suspect that a victory for the Zarqawi or Bin Laden forces would in some way be welcome to them? Or that the capture or killing of Bin Laden would not be something to celebrate with a whole heart?"

Perhaps the answer is that the Democrats in questions are extremists ("wingnuts," if you will), not necessarily in the positions they publicly advocate, but in their mindset and in their hearts.