A Word On The "Circular Firing Squad"

Tell you what, Chris Van Hollen. I and my "liberal groups" will lay off of fellow Democrats the moment that political leaders who call themselves Democrats stop doing things to deserve my wrath, such as the head of the DNC banning funding for stem cell research in Virginia, for example.

Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, has signed a bill into law banning the use of some state funds for embryonic stem cell research [...]

It contains language inserted by the General Assembly that would prevent a state fund from providing dollars to organizations or businesses that undertake "research in Virginia on human cells or tissue derived from induced abortions or from stem cells obtained from human embryos."

Kaine's support for the legislation is not surprising: He is a staunch Catholic who has long opposed using taxpayer money for embryonic stem cell research. But the platform of the Democratic Party, now headed by Kaine at Obama's behest, describes embryonic stem cell research as "research that could save lives."

See, I care more about principle than any party designation, and when Tim Kaine screws up, I'm likely to tell him he screwed up. Van Hollen's problem is determining who started "the circular firing squad": the politician who operates in a fashion dramatically opposed to Democratic core beliefs, or the "liberal groups" who respond? Obviously, Van Hollen is a politician himself, so we know where he lies on that axis.

“What I’ve been warning people very clearly is, beware of forming a circular firing squad,” Van Hollen said. “We believe people should be focusing their efforts on expanding the Democratic majority, and that should be their singular focus."

No, it shouldn't, the focus should be on improving the lives of the American people.

When In Doubt, Lie, Lie Again

Karl Rove is a born liar. It's actually what political professionals like him do for a living. Yet he somehow has achieved this mythic status in the traditional press and parlayed it into some sort of status. He's even writing a column for Newsweek now.

This claim that the Democrats in Congress were responsible for pushing the Iraq War Resolution vote right before the 2002 midterm elections has been completely discredited by everyone, even Rove's associates in the White House like Ari Fleischer and Andy Card. Yet Rove's instinct is to continue with the lie, in the hopes that the media will play it as an "opinions differ" issue instead of a "one guy is lying and everyone else is telling the truth" issue. In this way, Rove DEPENDS on a broken media system to give his lies credibility. Indeed, when the Washington Post reported on the controversy, they shied away from using the word "lie" and depicting Rove as telling obvious falsehoods. So he went ahead and lied again this morning.

On Fox News Sunday this morning, Karl Rove reiterated his false claim that Democrats in Congress — not the Bush administration — forced a war vote prior to the 2002 midterm elections. Despite having being contradicted by former Chief of Staff Andrew Card and former Press Secretary Ari Fleischer, Rove continued to press his make-believe story about how the Iraq war vote occurred.

On the Charlie Rose Show a little over a week ago, Rove said that “the administration was opposed to voting on it in the fall of 2002.” This morning, he changed his tune, saying that it is not true that Bush “was the only person” pushing Congress to vote on the war resolution:

REP. CHRIS VAN HOLLEN (D-MD): Now you’ve tried to suggest, and revise history here, clearly things have not gone right in Iraq, and you have tried to revise history and suggest that the Congress got ahead of the President on the Iraq war resolution.

KARL ROVE: No, that’s not what I said. What I said was that the general conventional wisdom was that the President was the only person pushing the Congress to vote on the war resolution before the November election, and that’s simply not true.

In other eras, people with this kind of unfamiliarity with the truth would simply be drummed out of public life. Even his allies would see him as a liability and would see to it that he was kept in the basement.

This is not such an era.

Dean Raking in Big-Donor Dollars

This very heartening story is perfect for a Friday, and I dare say it's a vindication of what we on this site have been doing and saying for a long time. There's of course a long way to go, but when the money men start listening and taking notice, it's a major win.

This is interesting: Democratic National Committee chair Howard Dean, who was greeted with intense skepticism by the party's big-money donors at the outset of his tenure, appears on track to bring in far more cash this quarter from those top fundraisers than many expected.

The DNC is on track to haul in roughly $14 million this quarter, approximately $3.8 million of which comes from major donors, who are defined as donors who gave more than $5,000 as an individual or from a PAC, the DNC says. That's a significant jump from the first quarter of 2003 -- the last comparable year -- when the DNC raised only $2.23 million from major donors, according to the DNC's numbers.

Let's take a trip down memory lane...

I don't think a day went by in early 2005 when we didn't hear about how Howard Dean taking over the DNC would lead to its ruin, and in particular that the big-money donors would leave the party in droves. This was a representative sample, and unsurprisingly it came from Robert Novak, to whom DLC types were no doubt running in droves to try and run down Dean:

Dean's chairmanship, thought extremely unlikely when he first indicated his availability three months ago, is itself testimony to his party's aimlessness.

Just as no power broker selected the former Vermont governor as DNC chairman, none is charting a strategy for regaining power. The mindless course leading to Dean's election by acclamation reflects a party adrift, its senior leaders mired in unreality.

Then there were repeated claims that Dean was hurting fundraising, based on first-quarter results after an election year, which isn't exactly charitable. Here's another one from Novak. And here. And here.

Not all of that was actually true, mind you. But the growing perception was that the big-money donors were angry, angry! that unhinged crazy man Howard Dean was running the DNC show. And certainly, it's been well-documented that the D-Trip wasn't exactly happy with the 50-state strategy that Dean implemented.

Whatever, Dean was always able to use the small-money revolution to get the funding he needed to grow the party. But this money coming in now is from the same big donors that were supposedly cool to him.

Top Democratic donor Robert Zimmerman describes the jump in money from the big contributors as "very significant."

"The major donors initially were skeptical of Dean and his 50-state strategy," Zimmerman says. "Dean had to prove the merits and logic of his strategies. But the success of his 50-state strategy certainly has impressed the establishment donor community. Unlike in 2004, when there was an overreliance on 527s that undermined the idea of a strong party structure, the support Dean is receiving from major donors shows a growing recognition among them that a strong DNC is an essential tool for victory in 2008."

Running operations in 2008 through the national party rather than a bunch of loosely connected 527s is going to be much improved for GOTV. And having the field teams in place since 2005 in all 50 states is the main reason why. Add to this the fact that the DCCC under Chris Van Hollen is supportive of Dean's efforts, and you have a much more united party that is using the models of the progressive movement to bring about victory.

Obviously, winning turns a lot of enemies into friends, and turns finger-pointing into handshaking. But let's step back and consider the significance. Howard Dean's victory as DNC Chair was one of the netroots' first major triumphs. We were told that we sabotaged the party. We were told that we just cost the Democrats elections for the next decade. We were told that the big money would dry up. We were told that we needed to steer the party to the middle and resist the angry left tendencies of the former Governor from Vermont.

I believe the password is, vindication.

And do consider giving a little cash to the DNC before tomorrow's deadline, so we can continue to vindicate Howard Dean's strategy of building Democratic infrastructure everywhere.