You had to know this was coming
Apparently there's beef between the DNC and DLC branches of the Democratic blogosphere. This is as close as I'm getting to all that noise.
Frankly, I wouldn't get that close had Liza of Culture Kitchen not spotted a comment from Hal at Hellblazer that sums up the whole problem with the discussion. And let me say this, because I do it at least quarterly: Hal rocks. Liza says "read the whole thing." I don't. You got all you need from Hal.
The undercurrent here is that the "softs" lost the election for Kerry. So that's the framing for all this bickering back and forth.
What I find so tragic is that it seems like some faction of the left - the flock of liberal hawks - seem to find it far more productive to slap around a bunch of pacifists than to take their pound of flesh out of the administration.
In an election where approximately 50% of the polled electorate believed we found actual weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and that we have solid evidence of collaboration of Saddam and Ussama, it's clear that the problem isn't that we have too many "softs" keeping the war wing of the party from properly trouncing the right.
The problem is that reality doesn't even enter into the political equation. People - lots of people - believe demonstrably false facts. And it's this discontinuity which lost the election - far more important than "values" or homophobia.
The Republicans were excellent at framing the campaign and warping reality. Until the Democrats get to the point where the truth and reality of the situation breaks through this fog, Rove is going to twist it any way he wants and we'll continually fall flat on our face.
2006 is going to be another rout, given the way things are going - i.e. the hawks will continue to blame the doves and continue to ignore the elephant in the room. So to speak.
