The Kos Kids have broken camp in Chicago after a three-day “netroots” convention that by all accounts was successful, except for an awkward moment when a soldier showed up. The Washington Times reports:
Liberal activists and bloggers left town yesterday energized after three days of strategizing ways to strengthen the Democratic majority and to pressure leaders to shift policy to the left.
Left unaddressed, for the moment, is the obvious tension between those objectives; that is, if the Democratic Party is pushed farther to the left, it is more likely to narrow its base of support than to broaden it. It was no doubt in order to bridge that gap that Chief Kossack Markos Moulitsos reportedly exclaimed, “We are the center!” But that claim suffers from the inconvenient defect of being untrue. They’re not the center, they’re the left.
Moreover, in the absence of any serious interest in promoting socialism (outside the field of health care, in any event), moving “left” mostly means stepping up the Democrats’ full-time assault on the Bush administration. This focus, pursued in lieu of legislation, has already driven the Democratic Congress’s standing with the public to an all-time low.
So, despite the enthusiasm manifested at the Chicago conclave, the Democrats’ dilemma of what to do with the “netroots” remains.
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