Dems unified? In your dreams, Hillary

What is going on here, anyway? From the Washington Post, headlined, "Clinton Angers Left with Call for Unity":

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's call for an ideological cease-fire in the Democratic Party drew an angry reaction yesterday from liberal bloggers and others on the left, who accused her of siding with the centrist Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) in a long-running dispute over the future of the party.

Long a revered figure by many in the party's liberal wing, Clinton (D-N.Y.) unexpectedly found herself under attack after calling Monday for a cease-fire among the party's quarreling factions and for agreeing to assume the leadership of a DLC-sponsored initiative aimed at developing a more positive policy agenda for the party.

Much as I relish writing about the conservative purges in the GOP, it is one of the things I hate about Democrats.

There is a wing of the party -- yes, even in Wisconsin -- that believes any Democrat who wins an election must have sold out. And they may be on to something, if "selling out" means being less than 100% ideologically pure, as the test is applied by the party's fringe. (They like to call themselves the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party, but they are only a wing on the Democratic bird, not the body.)

They are especially offended if someone they believe to be a fellow traveler on the left gets anywhere near a moderate. (They seem to have forgotten that Hillary's hubby came out of the DLC, and turned out to be the best (and almost only) President Democrats have elected in 40 years. In Wisconsin, Gov. Jim Doyle isn't liberal enough to suit the left wingers, either. But he's the first governor Democrats have elected in 16 years, and the last purist who ran got 40% of the vote.

While the national lefties focus their frustration on Hillary, who are the other contenders for President on the D side? The other speakers at the DLC meeting were: Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack, the newly named DLC chairman; Sen. Evan Bayh (Ind.), the outgoing DLC chairman; and Virginia Gov. Mark R. Warner, who just concluded a year as chairman of the National Governors Association. She's to the left of all of them, but she's the one who draws the flak.

Hillary asks everyone in her party to quit trying to kill each other off, and what happens? She ends up being used for target practice by the ideologues.

I don't have a candidate for President yet. I just hope that in the fight for the nomination, we can refrain from the usual fratricide. After last week's reaction, that hope seems pretty futile.