Can the Democrats Handle a Heretic?

Jim Webb is standing at parade rest, feet apart at shoulder width, chin out, quiet blue eyes scanning his target of opportunity—the assembled Democrats of Montgomery County, Virginia—and waiting for local party chieftain Steve Cochran to ask him something. "Well, looking through this," Cochran says, riffling through a series of questions written on three-by-five cards, "there's one dominant theme. People want to know why you became a Democrat after all those years as a Republican, and why you endorsed George Allen for the U.S. Senate over Chuck Robb in 2000, and why you...