MoveOn says that its asinine comment was a nudge, but could become a push for action in DNC Chair.

In a 12-12-04 post entitled in part "I do not like MoveOn's scathing public e-mail. We can't down the house just to roast the pig," I was critical of Eli Pariser, executive director of MoveOn’s political action committee, and urged him "to save his scathing public messages, whether by e-mail or otherwise, for when he is attacking Republicans, not Democrats."

Pariser, you recall, had sent MoveOn's members an e-mail urging them to get involved in the fight over the Democratic National Committee chairmanship by contacting state party leaders. In his combative letter, Pariser wrote, “Now it’s our Party: we bought it, we own it, and we’re going to take it back.”

As an update of the story, since sending the e-mail, Pariser in an interview with Newsweek, called the action a “nudge,” but indicated that if members show strong interest, that nudge might become a push.

MoveOn was started in 1998 to encourage Americans to “move on” from the Monica Lewinsky scandal. In the wake of the election’s blow to so many liberal causes, even Democrats like The New Republic’s Peter Beinart have joined Republicans in criticizing the group as ineffective and damaging to the liberal cause.

The conservative magazine National Review featured a picture of billionaire (and big MoveOn donor) George Soros with the headline: “I SPENT $27 MILLION AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS LOUSY T-SHIRT!”

On Nov. 3 Soros posted a Nov. 3 note on his blog promising, “I’ll be back.” I follow George Soros in the investment world, and if he says it, you can count on it.

MoveOn is, of course, a Democratic 527 and 501(c), so named for its IRS tax-status. It raised and spent millions of donors’ dollars, mobilized thousands of volunteers, helped to get out an unprecedented number of voters (including four million more youth than in 2000).

While MoveOn's battle cry is hardly my own, we need MoveOn; MoveOn needs those of us that would identify themselves as more traditional Democrats. You don't know my battle cry; all you have heard from me lately is my regrouping battle line from the Ballad of Sir Andrew Barton:

"Fight on, my men," says Sir Andrew Barton,
"I am hurt, but I am not slain;
I'll lay me down and bleed a while,
And then I'll rise and fight again."

Oh, I didn't tell you MoveOn's battle cry. Maybe I was trying to forget:

It is the famous dispatch from French general Ferdinand Foch at the second battle of the Marne in World War I:

“My center is giving way, my right is pulled back . . . Situation excellent. I shall attack.”