Swing State Project

My grievances with the DLC wing of the Democratic party have little to do with policy (aside from their infuriatingly self-serving corporatist-lite preenings, of course), and more to do with the fundamental fact that everything they've touched, since the Chosen One from Arkansas, has turned to crap. They've gone through the last three election cycles dispensing advice that has been poisonous to those who accept it. [...]

What we see, in both the DLC and among other Democratic pundits and strategists, is a modern Democratic leadership so focused on triangulation and exposition, so obsessed with precise and intentionally puddle-shallow framing, that it is categorically unable to react to the changing circumstances of actual campaigns, much less of leadership. Whether it be the presidential bids of Kerry or Gore, the stream of scandals coming from the GOP, the Iraq War, the blistering legislative and polemical Republican attacks on the seventy percent of America that does not represent their hardcore base, or the seemingly unstoppable mudslide of corporatist giveaways and right-wing sops flowing in an unbroken stream down the steps of Capitol Hill, what is remarkable about "centrist" Democratic leadership in the last dozen years is that it is so precisely tuned not to offend, not to divide, and not to enlighten that it lacks any compelling message whatsoever. The goal of the DLC is nearly uniformly defensive, never offensive.

As has been clear to everyone, the Hackett campaign is all about offense. The blog support has been 100% offense. Billmon says:

The significant thing, though, isn't that the DLC house organ is firing disinformation at the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party, but Range's particular choice of targets: Left Blogostan.

Like the Rovians, the dinos attack what they fear. And while lefty activist bloggers like Kos aren't exactly ten feet tall, they are beginning to have an impact, inside as well as outside the Democratic Party. The corporate media is paying attention. Money is being raised -- not quite serious money, not yet, but also cash that doesn't come with booze stains or shreds of tobacco on it. Those furry little critters in the underbrush may not amount to much now, the DLC dinosaurs fret, but they're definitely multiplying. Where will it end?

That's why Range's little slam at the size of Left Blogostan's audience is so silly:

These musings in the left-wing blogosphere may be read regularly by only a few thousand people, but they seep into the intellectual bloodstream of the Democratic Party.

Seep into the intellectual bloodstream? The blogosphere now is the intellectual bloodstream of the Democratic Party -- unless Range is talking about the fatty, cholesterol-clogged arteries of the D.C. lobbyist culture. These once fed oxygen (the long green variety) to the DLC's brand of corporate centrism. But those veins have nearly all been ripped out and reattached to Tom DeLay's mechanical heart.

Steve says it is, "Like using the Vince Lombardi playbook in the Bill Walsh era"

The blogs are throwing the ball, we are the West Coast Offense.

And the thing the DLC presidential candidates don't realize is that they don't want the DLC support. With the internet, a campaign can build it's own top-knotch organization instead of renting the DLC's third-rate apparatus.

It isn't left vs. right, it is about moving forward or clinging to the past.

Online, we're fighting ever day in every district. Even OH-02.