What? Kos wants John Murtha to knock Nancy Pelosi from the Speaker spot should the Democrats retake the House this fall (or, at the very least, Steny Hoyer from the whip position). Now I think all this certainty about the Democrats winning sounds terribly premature, and I’m no fan of either Pelosi or Hoyer, but come on.
A quick glance at Murtha’s history reveals that he has the most conservative voting record of any Democrat representing a district won by John Kerry in 2004. So he can’t cite his constituents as an excuse for his pro-life and anti-environment positions. Murtha’s outspoken against the war in Iraq, to be sure, but I can’t imagine it’s tough to find other, actually liberal Democrats with similar views that could be put up on a pedestal, if that’s what the “netroots” wants. Nor, I think, is the longstanding Democratic fetishization of military vets a terribly good thing on the merits, and getting behind a Murtha insurgent campaign would only further that trend. The netroots: our great “progressive” hope? Really, now.
