Senator Joseph Lieberman, Daily Kos, and the Future of the Democratic Party

I've never really paid that much attention to The Daily Kos. I don't like its politics and I don't care for its publisher, Markos Moulitsas. But I'm feeling some pangs of anger toward Kos now, after watching this Nightline episode covering Moulitsas' blog campaign to defeat Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut.

Lieberman's in the final leg of his primary campaign against insurgent challenger Ned Lamont. For my earlier post on Lieberman's primary challenge, click here. Daily Kos has pledged the defeat of Lieberman to be one of its top political priorities in this year's election season. The reason? Lieberman has emerged as the Senate's top Democrat supporting the American project of democracy-building in Iraq. Lieberman published an important essay in the Wall Street Journal last November after visiting Iraq, arguing against a precipitous withdrawal of U.S. forces from the country. Here's what Liberman said of Iraq, following the nation's January 2005 elections:

In the face of terrorist threats and escalating violence, eight million Iraqis voted for their interim national government in January, almost 10 million participated in the referendum on their new constitution in October, and even more than that are expected to vote in the elections for a full-term government on Dec. 15. Every time the 27 million Iraqis have been given the chance since Saddam was overthrown, they have voted for self-government and hope over the violence and hatred the 10,000 terrorists offer them. Most encouraging has been the behavior of the Sunni community, which, when disappointed by the proposed constitution, registered to vote and went to the polls instead of taking up arms and going to the streets. Last week, I was thrilled to see a vigorous political campaign, and a large number of independent television stations and newspapers covering it. None of these remarkable changes would have happened without the coalition forces led by the U.S. And, I am convinced, almost all of the progress in Iraq and throughout the Middle East will be lost if those forces are withdrawn faster than the Iraqi military is capable of securing the country.

Lieberman's commitment to America's Iraq project steams Daily Kos, the main representative of the netroot's liberal blogosphere, and, more importantly, the antiwar faction of the Democratic Party. The problem, of course, is that Moulitsas' views actually aid and abet terrorism, and it would be a disaster for American foreign policy should the Kos cut-and-run vision triumph in a Democratic takeover of Congress this fall.

Fortunately though, Kos-led netroot activists have been unable to develop a compelling campaign platform to rival that of the GOPs "Contract with America" from 1994, a point noted in David Broder's June 22 essay on the Yearly Kos convention in Las Vegas. Daily Kos' infuence is further belittled in this New York Magazine essay, where John Heileman dismisses Moulitsas as "purity-enforcing commissar" for the Democrats and the "self-appointed head of the blogitburo." I would add, further, that Moulitsas is an egomaniac who doesn't know much about political strategy. If Heileman's right, the Moulitsas agenda will alienate mainstream American opinion and further relegate the Democrats to political obscurity and irrelevance. Let's hope so.