Hanging out at the Cafe...

It's Thursday....

better than that, it's the every-other-Thursday when the latest episode of The Last Chance Democracy Cafe' is published...so in between phone calls and CEUs, I've been "hanging out" over at Stephen C. Day's virtual Cafe and eavesdropping on what Tom, Winston, Zach and the rest of the gang have to say.

As usual, they gave me something to think about.....and...because as Albert Einstein said, "there is no such thing as coincidence." a large part of what Steve and the "guys" (although Molly does make a cameo appearance today) are discussing shows up in a nasty little food fight between KOS and Joe Klein in today's blog "The Swamp".

In case I lost you there....let me tie it together for you.

The title of today's episode in the Cafe' is: BE AUDACIOUS OR DIE!

It starts out by asking if the Democratic Party is a "One-hit-Wonder"...(all of us baby-boomers and American Bandstand babies should know what that means)and goes on to talk about the fact that while the Democrats won a least a "taste" of power in the 06 election, the Republicans still maintain a HUGE structural advantage because of the infrastructure they have built up over the past 20 years or so.

(note: there is an interesting discussion of the Clinton years in there which I find remarkably insightful....read it...comment on it...)

The point is that the Democratic Party must be audaciuos enough to make structural changes that will either negate or eliminate the Republican advantages in money, media and think tanks or it will lose in the upcoming elections.

So how does the KOS/Klein food-fight play into this?

Easy....because KOS and Klein each represent very divergent views of how the party should proceed. There is the "centrist" position of the establishment (Klein) and then there is the Liberal/Progessive position represented by KOS (and hehehehehe...the blogosphere in general). The liberal/progressive wing wants to be audacious and the establishment wing want to be cautious....

For the record, the current food fight involves Congresswoman Ellen Tauscher (D-Dalifornia) and the Washington Post sums the battle up like this:

The Democratic majority was only three weeks old, but by Jan. 26, the grass-roots and Net-roots activists of the party's left wing had already settled on their new enemy: Rep. Ellen O. Tauscher (D-Calif.), the outspoken chair of the centrist New Democrat Coalition.
Progressive blogs -- including two new ones, Ellen Tauscher Weekly and Dump Ellen Tauscher -- were bashing her as a traitor to her party. A new liberal political action committee had just named her its "Worst Offender." And in Tauscher's East Bay district office that day in January, eight MoveOn.org activists were accusing her of helping President Bush send more troops to Iraq.

And KOS has been leading the charge...

As we tried to do in Connecticut. While we didn't get rid of Joe Lieberman, we helped to effectively marginalize him. He's now stuck to a failed and disastrously unpopular president, and is in a no-man's land of politics--useless to the Republicans because he won't support many of their pet causes, and a pariah in his own party. Contrast that to Jane Harman, as Markos does in this story:

But Kos points to Harman as a perfect example of how the Net roots can keep Democrats in line. He said Harman used to be a constant irritant, a go-to quote for reporters looking for a Democrat to tweak liberals -- until she had to fight off a primary challenge from the left in 2006. "She's been great ever since," he said. Now Harman even writes on the liberal Huffington Post blog.

Klein, of course, disagrees:

Update Atrios makes my point for me. If you want to tell me how you're going to guarantee a left-wing challenger won't weaken Tauscher, or perhaps see her replaced by a moderate Republican, I'm all ears.As for Ezra, I disagree with Tauscher on the estate tax and bankruptcy, but once again--you think a Republican would vote differently? And I very much liked Jane Harman, before she was mau-maued, and wish she were the Chair of the House Intelligence Committee now. Unlike the current Pelosi-selected chairman, she knows the difference between a sunni and shi'ite.

And finally: While you infants are getting all self-righteous about the sins of moderates and littering the space with pornographic comments, the Republicans have spent the day sending bombs like this to people like me. They've done one for each Democratic candidate for President. Some perspective, please, from the commentariat.

I won't get into the "bloggers are uncivil" argument right now, but I thought Joe had seen the light and said so in an earlier post...

Good material for thought this morning...pour a cup of coffee, grab a sweetroll, and settle into the Last Chance Democracy Cafe' (and leave a comment)