Mitch Berg notes that MoveOn.org wants to take over the leadership of the Democratic Party:
A scathing e-mail from the head of MoveOn’s political action committee to the group’s supporters on Thursday targets outgoing Democratic National Committee chairman Terry McAuliffe as a tool of corporate donors who alienated both traditional and progressive Democrats.
“For years, the party has been led by elite Washington insiders who are closer to corporate lobbyists than they are to the Democratic base,” said the e-mail from MoveOn PAC’s Eli Pariser. “But we can’t afford four more years of leadership by a consulting class of professional election losers.”
Under McAuliffe’s leadership, the message said, the party coddled the same corporate donors that fund Republicans to bring in money at the expense of vision and integrity.
“In the last year, grass-roots contributors like us gave more than $300 million to the Kerry campaign and the DNC, and proved that the party doesn’t need corporate cash to be competitive,” the message continued. “Now it’s our party: we bought it, we own it, and we’re going to take it back.”
This is like the Democrats shooting themselves in the foot with a pistol, then switching to a rifle and shooting the other foot, then debating dropping a small tactical nuke on themselves. MoveOn.org represents a small radical fringe of the Democratic Party, and their overheated rhetoric drove far more votes from Kerry than they ever gained. If MoveOn gains effective control over the Democratic Party, the Democrats will end up going the way of the Whigs and the days of Democratic majorities will end as the party splits between moderate Democrats and radical liberal extremists.
Which is why I’m sure that a MoveOn.org takeover of the Democratic Party would be the best Christmas gift Karl Rove could ever ask for…
