Blue Dog Dem Bashing Season

I have had some mixed feelings about challenging the Bush Dog Dems campaign on Open Left and to a certain extent on other progressive blogs. I couldn't quite put my finger on it until I read this post by Oliver Willis:

That, at the heart, is what I think my reaction to the "Bush Dog" effort comes down to. This is a strategy by folks like Matt Stoller to attack Democrats with more conservative than desired voting records, and I guess challenge them in primaries. Ok, fine I guess. But to someone like myself who figures even a conservative Dem is better than a Republican, it seems kind of futile. A lot of the Democrats listed are the only kind of Democrats likely to be elected in their districts. Nick Lampson represents TX-22, which was Tom DeLay's seat. Does anyone really think such a conservative district is going to be represented by a moderate to progressive Democrat any time soon? Not going to happen.

I certainly think these Dems should be challenged on issues like ending the Iraq war and some of their positions on social issues like abortion (they tend to be economically populist, however) but Democrats like these in those conservative districts are the best we're likely to get.

I agree with him. And many of those same Blue Dogs support John Edwards because of economic fairness. However, I do think they need to push Bush more. The angry mood over the war is getting more ugly, and it's time they started doing what the American people want and not be afraid of the Republicans or wingnut noise machines. As John Edwards said again yesterday, they can start by sending back the bill to Bush on funding the war in Iraq to include a timeline. The timeline doesn't have to be revealed to the journalists, but Bush needs to agree to have one in order to get the funding.