Our great friend Chris Bowers writes about our good friends Ed Kilgore and Tom Schaller, and Dems and Dixie:

During my four years in the netroots, I have become a firm believer in coalition politics, and that it takes a wide range of people to form a governing majority. . . One of the keys to building this coalition is that we work together. . . . Ed Kilgore is someone who recognizes these needs. . .

I have been good friends with Ed since early 2005 and have long enjoyed discussing all manner of political issues with him, but especially about the South. And while Ed's post is presented as a counter to Tom Schaller's, I think their views are more similar than Tom, Ed AND Chris think. I'll explain on the flip.

Two stories I saw tonight got me to doing a pre-mortem on this Election 2006. This one pissed me off:

Some Democrats worry that those forecasts, accurate or not, may be setting the stage for a demoralizing election night, and one with lasting ramifications, sapping the party's spirit and energy heading into the 2008 presidential election cycle.

Two years ago, winning 14 seats in the House would have been a pipe dream, said Matt Bennett, a founder of Third Way, a moderate Democratic organization. Now, Mr. Bennett said, failure to win the House, even by one seat, would send Democrats diving under their beds (not to mention what it might do to all the pundits). It would be crushing, he said. It would be extremely difficult.

Mr. Cook put it more succinctly. I think you'd see a Jim Jones situation; it would be a mass suicide, he said.

Who in the heck told them this? This is nuts. Sure I and most Dems would be disappointed. We expect to take the House and should. But crushing? For crissakes. More.

Ed Kilgore and the DLC again meltdown over people calling out the truth about their operation (For those who aren't interested in the ultra-personal attacks the DLC is unleashing on me and just want to look just at the political implications of the DLC's behavior, skip down to the third paragraph). Before I go into what this all means, let me first acknowledge one addendum (though not exactly a correction) to my earlier post - the Washington Post's report that Ed worked for Zell Miller is is 100 percent true, but as the Post did not report and I have since found out, he worked for him way before he went crazy, And though I didn't know how close to the Miller meltdown he worked for him or how close to him he had been in the lead up to the meltdown, I regret not including that fact in my original post. Ed, I do apologize sincerely, and I have made an addendum on the original post.

It's been a rough few weeks for the folks at Big Money's Democratic Party Embassy, otherwise known as the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC). First, Rolling Stone cut through the DLC's seemingly friendly, subtly caustic, vaguely cultish rhetoric and exposed its rather odious agenda for all to see (an agenda I also try to detail in my new book Hostile Takeover). Then, DLC posterboy Joe Lieberman lost to a previously little-known reformist challenger named Ned Lamont, despite Lieberman grossly outspending Lamont with corporate dollars flowing to him from many of the same industries that fund the DLC. Then, populist Wisconsin Sen. Russ Feingold (D) dropped the hammer on the DLC in a speech at the Milwaukee Press Club - the first time in recent memory a Senator has publicly told the truth about the destructive influence the DLC has had on the Democratic Party. So, all in all, DLC staffers Al From, Bruce Reed, Will Marshall, Ed Kilgore, Marshall Wittman and the Big Money interests they rely on for their DLC paychecks are probably not so happy.

As near as I can tell, it all started (at least publicly) in May of 2003.  In a memo from the DLC, From and Reed decided the best course of action for the Democrats was to attack other Democrats.

What activists like [Gov. Howard] Dean call the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party is an aberration: the McGovern-Mondale wing, defined principally by weakness abroad and elitist, interest-group liberalism at home. That's the wing that lost 49 states in two elections, and transformed Democrats from a strong national party into a much weaker regional one.

cross-posted on The Third Avenue I used to work for the Democratic Leadership Counsel, back when I first graduated from college.  The people there are great, smart, and genuinely trying to do the best thing for the Democratic Party.  So too are the elected officials they court and trot out at events.  But I will tell you why their latest presser was another PR disaster after the flip.

From the diaries. mcjoan

A friend of mine, Ed Kilgore, who works for the DLC, wrote:

I sometimes despair of convincing bloggers that people like me support what we support and oppose what we oppose for reasons of principle.

When it comes to Ed, I am certain that is true. I am even willing to operate under the premise that others in the DLC operate that way. But here is the DLC's problem - Marshall Wittman works for them:

Unfortunately, American progressives rarely speak about the stakes in the war against Jihadism. They are far too preoccupied with complaining about the Administration's failures in the war. Of course, there is much to criticize. But, the enemy is not this President, but a profoundly reactionary faction that seeks to defeat America in Iraq and then move on to other triumphs. Whatever one's position on the wisdom of removing Saddam's tyranny, that fact should be apparent.

. . . Defeatism prevails in the Democratic Party. While that stance may appear to have short-term political benefits, the party will and should pay a stiff price with both the American people and history if it presses for retreat at the moment our enemy is on the offensive.

Zarqawi understands the stakes. Blair understands the stakes. It's time for Democrats to grasp the stakes, as well.

Let's forget about the inaccuracy of Wittman's analysis. Being wrong is not a sin. What is shameful and despicable is Wittman's continued aping of the Republican Party's New McCarthyite tactic of labelling disagreement with him and Bush as "defeatism." Understand what he is saying - Zbig Brzezenzki, General Wesley Clark, former Reagan Secretary of the Navy and current Dem Virginia Senatorial candidate Jim Webb, former Reagan Administration official Lawrence Korb and over 70% of the American People want defeat for the United States in Iraq according to Wittman.

I am sorry Ed, but Wittman and the DLC, as long as the DLC does not disavow his pronouncements, are not entitled to respect in my view. The D in DLC is supposed to stand for Democratic (I know Wittman claims to be an Independent, though his support for McCain says otherwise). Attacking the patriotism of Democrats for disagreeing with you is not what I expect to hear from Democratic organizations. As many negative things as we have written about Joe Lieberman, we have never, and we never will, question his love for the United States. His loyalty to the Democratic Party? Well, I think he has left himself open to such questioning.

Hillary Clinton is closely identified with the DLC. What is her opinion of these scurrilous attacks on the patriotism of Democrats by Wittman?

It really bothers me that the prevailing line on Portgate is that Bush is being hoisted by his own petard. An example of this kind of thinking is provided by Ed Kilgore:

By His Own Petard

Ron Brownstein certainly nails it today in explaining why George W. Bush is running into some serious resistance to his "Nothing To See Here" line on the Dubai port sale:

President Bush may not like the arguments that critics are raising against the Dubai company attempting to take over cargo and cruise operations at ports in six U.S. cities. But he should recognize them. The arguments marshaled against Bush closely echoed the ones he deployed to defend the Iraq war. The president, in other words, is stewing in a pot he brought to boil.

At the core of Bush's case for invading Iraq was the contention that the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks changed the burden of proof in evaluating potential threats. Bush justified the war, despite inconclusive intelligence about whether Iraqi President Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, largely on the grounds that after Sept. 11, waiting for definitive evidence of danger was itself too risky.

With due respect, if the Iraq Debacle merely entailed disallowing contracts for Iraq's operation of our ports, if it merely entailed closer scrutiny of Iraq, if it merely entailed tightening sanctions on Iraq, perhaps the comparison could be palatable.

But it did not. Bush took us to a disastrous war. A debacle that has cost hundreds of billions of dollars, wrecked U.S. interests in the world, left Iraq in shambles, driven anti-Americanism to unseen heights, and oh by the way, cost thousands of lives, including over 2,000 of our soldiers.

Sorry, the comparison is facile. Even offensive. I wish good folks like Kilgore and Brownstein would not use it. Whatever the merits of the Portgate concerns, please do NOT trivialize what Bush has wrought in Iraq. You do yourselves no credit.

I know, I know. Infighting between Democrats is a dangerous thing. It is the curse of thinking peoples to lack the ability to mindlessly rally behind a single word, concept, or party. It is largely why we have a hard time selling our message.

But ta hell with Ed Kilgore.

UPDATE: Thanks to pursewarden for pointing out my dyslexic DNC, DLC typo, and I should've pointed out that the link only goes to the show's page. The audio won't be up until tomorrow.

You may have heard me refer to Lincoln 1860, The Politics of Contrast, Passive Aggression and Small Target. About say, a zillion times.

I've won a convert, from the DLC no less:

Ruy Teixeira's Donkey Rising site . . . posted a summary of the current standing of the two parties on major issues. It's mostly good news--in some cases spectacular news--for us Donkeys, but with a few exceptions that deserve attention, especially in terms of our credibility in fighting terror and the clarity of our overall message.

On this last point, Ruy concludes:

In short, voters are still much surer of what they don't like (Republican policies and Bush's job as president) than of what they might like (Democratic policies and leadership). It's up to Democrats to clarify that situation, starting with, finally, convincing the American public they know what they stand for.

That's true, but we all have to remember one very important thing about "message clarity": the only thing worse than leaving voters unsure about "what you stand for" is to resolve their doubts by "standing" for positions and/or values they don't like.

. . . You could make a good case that the current GOP meltdown is partly the result of an "our team" mentality that until recently has thwarted any real intra-party Republican debate, or any honest Republican discussion with the rest of the country. I'm perfectly happy to sacrifice a few points in polls on "message clarity" in order to keep my party from following this authoritarian pattern.

Ok, it's the smart guy from the DLC, so he probably knew all this already, but I'll take it.