Democrats should oppose Bush, not attempt moderation

Good Diary by Armando over at dKos.

The thesis is that Washington Democrats are still wedded to the moderation of the DLC because they believe that America is more of a conservative than a liberal nation. As Ed Kilgore, the policy director for the DLC, states "We are more of a coalition party than they are. If we put a gun to everybody's head in the country and make them pick sides, we're not likely to win."

Armando quotes Ronald Brownstein, Eli Pariser and Marcos moulitas at length disagreeing with this position. It is worth reading in full.

I am in favor of strong confrontation. The DLC position may have made some sense when Clinton had the White House and there were moderate Republicans to deal with. Now the democrats are totally an opposition party and the Republican extremists have the bit in their teeth. I don't think that the swing voters will side with the Republican extremists over strong Democrats who stand up to say the Republican extremism is both wrong and unamerican.

The recent special election in Ohio 2nd Congressional District where Paul Hackett came within 3 1/2 percentage points of beating an extremist Republican by speaking his mind is proof of the power of confrontation. Paul Hackett's positions and aggressive opposition is where the Democrats should have been last year, and where we'd better be in 2006.