Lefty Activists Creating Chaos for Dems

The Washington Post has a piece today on the internal battles in the Dem party between the lefty bloggers and activists, and those who are trying to maintain some semblance of sanity. I think the infighting is going to get a lot uglier (at least, I hope so):

Democrats are getting an early glimpse of an intraparty rift that could complicate efforts to win back the White House: fiery liberals raising their voices on Web sites and in interest groups vs. elected officials trying to appeal to a much broader audience.

These activists -- spearheaded by battle-ready bloggers and making their influence felt through relentless e-mail campaigns -- have denounced what they regard as a flaccid Democratic response to the Supreme Court fight, President Bush's upcoming State of the Union address and the Iraq war. In every case, they have portrayed party leaders as gutless sellouts.

First, liberal Web logs went after Democrats for selecting Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine to deliver the response to Bush's speech next Tuesday. Kaine's political sins: He was too willing to drape his candidacy in references to religion and too unwilling to speak out aggressively against Bush on the Iraq war. Kaine has been lauded by party officials for finding a victory formula in Bush country by running on faith, values and fiscal discipline.

Many Web commentators wanted Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.), a leading critic of the Iraq war who advocates a speedy withdrawal, to be the opposition voice on the State of the Union night. Most Democratic lawmakers have distanced themselves from the Murtha position. "What the hell are they thinking?" was the title of liberal blogger Arianna Huffington's column blasting the Kaine selection.

Hey, I'm not a lefty blogger and even I blasted the selection of Tim Kaine. And who do they have giving the Spanish language response? L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, another relative newby with no national presence. Curious.

And the desire of the lefties to replace Kaine with Murtha is so typical of the short-sightedness of those folks. The State of the Union speech deals with broad themes and many different issues, but the lefties want to bring in One-Note Johnny Murtha to tell us all again why we should surrender. Yeah, that will win over the heartland.

Democratic lobbyist Steve Elmendorf has drawn the ire of the hard left with this comment:

"The bloggers and online donors represent an important resource for the party, but they are not representative of the majority you need to win elections," said Steve Elmendorf, a Democratic lobbyist who advised Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign. "The trick will be to harness their energy and their money without looking like you are a captive of the activist left."

In other words, we're going to pretend to pay attention to you and act like we like you long enough to get your money and hard work, but then we're going to try hard and pretend you don't exist. After all, you're poison to sane people.

As expected, that did not sit well with Markos Moulitsas, the 800 pound chimp of the liberal blogging world. His response (from the Corner):

Mr. Elmendorf almost got it right. The trick, in reality, is to stop appearing like our Democrats are held captive to sleazebag amoral lobbyists.

Here's notice, any Democrat associated with Elmendorf will be outed. The netroots can then decide for itself whether it wants to provide some of that energy and money to that candidate.

There's nothing "extreme left" with demanding Democrats act like Democrats, no matter how much these out-of-touch and self-important beltway insiders think it is.

Girl fight! Girl fight!