Moveon.org and the Democratic Party

Chris Cillizza writes about the danger to the Democratic Party when the goals of the party and the left anti-war movement depart.

This latest ad by MoveOn, however, shows that the left's goals and the party's goals are not always in coordination. There's no question that yesterday was a GREAT day for MoveOn; its ad was shown and referred to not only in the hearings but on the wall-to-wall cable television coverage. And, the ad accurately reflected the sentiment of its consitutency; liberals do not trust Petraeus and view him as yet another tool of the Bush Administration's attempt to deceive the American public when it comes to the conditions on the ground in Iraq.

It was not such a great day for the Democratic Party as the ad gave Republicans a chance to play offense of the war. Republicans have been back on their heels for months (if not years) when it comes to Iraq and the combination of Petraeus' plan to draw down 30,000 troops by next summer and the MoveOn ad gave Republicans a foothold to get back into the debate.

Watch for Republicans to continue to wrap Moveon around the Democratic Party and increase calls for candidates to return donations from Moveon. And when they don't, the GOP will start talking about a Democrat as the candidate from Moveon. If people start seeing the Moveon/Code Pink as parallel to those who attacked our soldiers returning from Vietnam it could be a dangerous trend for Democratic candidates to be tied to such a movement. Howard Dean might have roused activists, but average voters just lost interest in that sort of stridency. Who knows if independents will start to see support from Moveon or Daily Kos as a taint for any politician. Most people don't pay any attention to the stories that rile up bloggers and activists and may have very little awareness of the sort of extremist nonsense regularly written on such sites. We'll have to see if the Republicans will be successful in painting the Democratic Party as joined at the hip to a the Moveon crowd.