We of the DLC are really nice guys...

.... and the sooner you wacked-out kooks acknowledge that, the better!

After my post yesterday on the New Dems claiming Barack Obama as a member, I came across the above post. Sanctimonious title and angry finger-pointing aside, there are well-reasoned critiques like this: attacks on the DLC have been "endless, personal, often obscene, and frankly, a little nuts." Whew. I haven't witnessed anything like that, frankly, although I always hear capable bloggers being called fanatics and extremists by the DLC. Most blogs have been pretty kind to the New Dems, and the concensus seems to be, "Why so much energy spent on attacking your fellow Dems, when we should be united in stopping the admin's reactionary agenda?"

But here's the money shot, as it were. Early in the post: "[Kos] even took the trouble to dig down in our web page--bypassing a few hundred thousand pages of policy work, which is what we do to pass the time while waiting for the next call from Fox News--and discover that Sen. Barack Obama is still listed in our data base! Scandal! (He's in there because he recently joined the Senate New Democrat Coalition, all of whose members are in our database, which is about as controversial as a phone book)."

Note the update at the bottom of the page: "UPDATE: Turns out I was misinformed about Obama's being a member of the Senate New Democrat Coalition. The misunderstanding was based on the two different meanings of "New Democratic Senators," but we were wrong about that, and have removed his name from our Directory. Still love the guy, though."

The whole post is worth reading for its bizarre fusion of persecution complex and see-no-evil-ism. That 'correction' at the end still manages to be arrogant, in spite of the fact that it tacitly acknowledges that Kos was quite right-- without retracting calling Kos a 'hater' who throws 'temper tantrums.' Now, is that nice?

MEANWHILE, over at TPM, guest blogger Jonathan Chait writes of the Bull Moose having pretty much the same problem. He likes Lieberman. He calls other bloggers extremists and fanatics. And he defends Lieberman even when he has his facts wrong. Kinda like the above post-- he pretty much refuses to acknowledge his error, and isn't about to back off the hyperbolic rhetoric.

Chait (who also calls other bloggers lefty-fanatics) writes: "Be that as it may, there’s a specific issue here. Marshal [aka The Bull Moose] claimed Lieberman opposed the bankruptcy bill, but it turned out he really didn’t. Shouldn’t he, you know, admit that? He could still argue why he supports Lieberman despite this one bad vote. But clearly he was caught praising Lieberman for a particular stance and then, when it was pointed out that Lieberman actually did the opposite, lashed out at his critics without acknowledging the contradiction."

Thanks for the intellectual honesty, John ol' boy. I don't have anything against centrist Dems, but this is just bad behavior-- and it does anything but win them friends.