both have wide-open races in the same election cycle, which is rare. Republicans will get all their ammunition for the general election from the bile spewed during the race for the Democratic nomination. Luckily, Republicans will face their own circular firing squad in the months to come.

on the Post blog thread, under my usual screen name.

Mark Warner is another YearlyKos participant. And Jerome Armstrong, the Blogfather himself, worked for the Warner for Pres. campaign.

1. All that money and energy wasted against Leiberman. What if instead we'd pushed more of the money to local house races, maybe we could have gotten 5-6 more seats. 
2. Trashing Dems in general.  I don't see right wing blogs attacking Snow, Colins, etc as often as I see Kos trashing some conservative dem. 
3. Maybe it is time the dems made some tough ads instead of whining about the ones the republicans throw up there.  Given Gibbs' fantastic response on the John Howard attack on Obama the other day (ie if the Australians PM cares so much maybe he'd man up and send more than 1700 troups); I like this guys fire.  You don't win the Whitehouse without one tough guy (a Carville, a rove, etc).

Kos is not aging well; he's gone from earnest young man with great ideas, to angry disillusioned crankpot.

I don't know how many times I've seen the term "RINO" thrown around the right-wing blogs. They despise Chuck Hagel. And Virginia's conservative bloggers hate Chichester and Potts like the plague.

Markos doesn't have a problem with all conservative or moderate Democrats. Just the ones who do the GOP's dirty work. (Only much, much more effectively coming from a Democrat)

People like Markos and Jerome knows perfectly well that those Democrats do have a place in the party. Ever hear of SD Congresswoman Stephanie Herseth? She makes Lieberman look like Paul Wellstone, and she was a netroots candidate. Paul Hackett was a more conservative candidate for Senate in Ohio than Sherrod Brown was.

I don't consider Kos a crackpot at all, as the poster before Chris said.  Sometimes he is pretty savvy, especially in supporting more conservative Democrats in the South and Midwest, where a real liberal wouldn't have a snowball's chance in hell of winning.

But sometimes I think he misreads just how liberal the Northeast truly is, or isn't. The same is true of California.

Those regions are reliably blue in national elections because the Republican Party has insisted on running the most conservative of Southern and Southwestern candidates at the top of their ticket.

But even the mostly liberal regions of the country actually have suburbs and exurban areas that are not as liberal as Kos thinks they are.

Let's face it, there's a reason why New York state had a Republican governor for over ten years.  It's the same reason that New York City has it's second Republican mayor, Michael Bloomburg, who is now serving his second term.  Same reason that Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins win in New England.  And why Massachussetts had Mitt Romney as governor. And it's why Joe Lieberman would still win in Connecticut.

Does anybody see the pattern?

It's that the suburban voters, even in the bluest states, are more moderate and centrist than the hard left activists.  And it's the same problem that Republicans have in Northern Virginia.  Here, the suburbanites are far more moderate than the hard right activists in the Republican Party.  That's why we, who are realistic Democrats, are making gains in NOVA.  The Republicans who are still hard to beat here are the Tom Davis RINOs, hated by the conservatives in their own party, but who win because they convince voters (whether it's true or not) that they are moderates.

Kos places too much faith in the liberalism of the Northeast and California. It's not that he's a crackpot but that he's too idealistic.  But wishful thinking won't win elections or get you a solid majority in Congress.