I did a post on Friday deploring the idea of a purge of Howard Dean as DNC chairman. This one deplores the idea of a purge of Steny Hoyer as the number-two official among House Democrats. It’s motivated by a statement made by Speaker-Elect Nancy Pelosi supporting Jack Murtha’s strange challenge to Hoyer as Majority Leader in the next House. It’s strange because there’s really not a case to be made for any failing by Hoyer as Whip; it’s all about Murtha’s late-life emergence as an antiwar icon. It’s not as though Steny has done anything to undermine House Democrats in their criticism of Bush Iraq policies. And it’s not as though Murtha has any other case to make for being a good representative of House Democrats. He’s actually been a bit to the right of Jimmy Dean Sausage on a host of issues over the years. I don’t necessarily hold that against him, but I do object to the idea that he’s an impeccably good Democrat, and Steny’s not. It’s just not true. Hoyer’s probably going to win, unless Pelosi really goes to the mats for Murtha. Let’s hope she’s made her statement for Murtha precisely because it sends a nice signal to those in the party who think Iraq is literally the only issue that matters, without staking House Democrats to an unnecessary internal fight and an exclusive commitment to Murtha’s views on redeployment. And maybe Nancy Pelosi and James Carville should get together, compare notes, and eschew intraparty battles for a while. This we don’t need.

I haven’t blogged about college football in a while, in part because the political news has been more compelling, and in part because my beloved Georgia Bulldogs were going through a 1-4 stretch in which they lost to Vanderbilt and Kentucky, and nearly lost to Mississippi State.But today the Dawgs hammered fifth-ranked Auburn, at Auburn 37-15. And the score was indicative of the nature of the game (Georgia outgained Auburn 444-172). Indeed, if true freshman QB Matthew Stafford hadn’t lost two fumbles in the course of his inspired scrambling (he gained 76 yards rushing, with a touchdown), the margin might have gone even higher.Stafford actually deserves a lot of praise (his overall performance was amazing), and Mark Richt deserves some praise for putting the ball in the hands of his most talented QB in a lost year and letting him get experience. Georgia’s butter-fingered receivers rediscovered their Velcro. Kregg Lumpkin rushed for over 100 yards. Tre Battle personally made 3 of 4 Georgia INTs (Auburn QB Brandon Cox got sacked early, and seemed to be off-target the rest of the day). The GA defense was generally impressive. And the GA offensive line, down to a handful of reliable players due to injuries, was fanstastic.Georgia’s bad season has been somewhat saved, though a win over the nationally ranked Dirt Daubers of Georgia Tech week after next would do wonders for morale in Athens.

It’s obvious that the Bush administration’s handling of Iraq was a big factor in the Democratic midterm victory (though surprisingly, the national exit polls placed Iraq fourth in the ranks of “most important issues,” after corruption, the war on terrorism, and the economy). And in the wake of the victory, I can’t blame the most avid antiwar Democrats for crowing about the steady trend of public opinion in the direction of a rejection of the war as a bad idea from the beginning.But given the likely long-range prominence of national security in American politics, and the persistent doubts of many voters about Democratic credibility on national security (which mattered a lot in 2004, and might have mattered this year if Bush and company had not discredited themselves so thoroughly), it’s important for Democrats to be clear-eyed about the challenges they face. That’s why I was troubled by a TPMCafe post by the usually excellent Greg Sargent the other day that suggested the intra-party divide on national security was between those who (correctly) wanted to be loud and proud in attacking the administration on every front, and those who (incorrectly) wanted to stay silent and fight out the election on domestic issues. Greg’s right that some Democrats have habitually wanted to ignore national security issues and some habitually have objected (going all the way back to the 1970s), but this is a divide that cuts across the left-right, pro-war anti-war differences of opinion. The apotheosis of the change-the-subject approach was in the last midterm elections, those in 2002, and it was promoted and opposed by Democrats on both sides of the decision to invade Iraq (the DLC, to cite one example, ranted against the concede-national-security point of view relentlessly). Indeed, this was a debate that never ended within the Kerry general election campaign in 2004.Within the now-triumphant don’t-ignore-national-security camp among Democrats, a secondary argument has been, as Greg briefly discusses, whether to attack the Bush administration and the GOP for its incompetence on Iraq, or for its basic decision to go after Saddam Hussein. I strongly suspect a lot of voters would consider this a theoretical and backward-looking dispute that is irrelevant to the basic judgment that Bush and company lied and bullied their way into a war they didn’t know how to win. And that’s why Democrats were almost certainly smart to frame their party message on Iraq almost exactly that way. Going forward, perhaps the most significant divide among Democrats on national security is between those who view the Iraq war, however it ends, as a distraction from the broader fight against (substitute your favorite terms) jihadist terrorism, and those who think that broader war is a chimera or a mistake as well. The latter camp (which extends over into the GOP “realist” ranks) implicitly agrees with Bush, Cheney and the neocons that you can’t separate Iraq from the U.S. reaction to 9/11; the failure of the former indicates a basic misconception of the latter. I don’t think this represents anything like a majority of antiwar Democrats, but it’s a debate that needs to be flushed out in the open, and resolved before 2008.

I was out of pocket travelling most of today, and initially missed the brouhaha over the alleged plot to get rid of Howard Dean as DNC chairman. Having now read my emails; the Ryan Lizza Plank post that seems to be the source for James Carville’s suggestion that Dean be replaced by Harold Ford; and the angry reaction of the blogosphere, my first thought is:Lordy, lordy. I’ve always liked Carville, as a guy with impressive strategic and tactical instincts, and impeccable partisan credentials. And I also like Harold Ford, who I suspect was as surprised as anyone by Carville’s dropping of his name. But this is a really bad idea, at a really bad time. In the wake of Tuesday’s victory, party committee chieftain Rahm Emanuel and Howard Dean appear to have buried the hatchet, and there’s a general sense among most Democrats that they both did their very different jobs during the campaign well enough. We do not need any purges at present, thank you. Since I’m sure it’s a matter of time before someone suggests the DLC is behind the Plot Against Dean (Markos has already indicated that his post-election attitude of sweetness and light and unity does not extend to the DLC, for whom he holds an especially personal, intense and consistent hostility), allow me to say that Dean’s long-range 50-state-strategy, and the broader insistence of the netroots that Democrats should not write off big swatches of the country, reflects what the DLC has been saying for eons. Hell, it was exactly what the DLC (and most explicitly, PPI president Will Marshall) argued for in the wake of the 2004 elections. There are undoubtedly legitimate differences of opinion about exactly how and how far to “expand the battlefield,” but this is actually one political issue where the netroots and the DLC tend to agree, against the ancient habits of the party professionals, who so often fight the last war in the narrowest possible trenches.In any event, James should get off the purge-Dean bandwagon, if indeed that’s what he’s riding, and focus his considerable talents on the very different challenges Democrats will face in 2008. I see nothing other than good things in the rear-view mirror of the 2006 elections.