Wes Boyd of MoveOn talks to Farhad Marjoo

in Salon today:

For Boyd to declare 'mission accomplished' after the kind of bruising defeat the left suffered on Nov. 2 may seem to play into just the thing MoveOn has been criticized for recently -- being too satisfied with the strength of its cyber-presence while ignoring the piling losses in the offline world. But Boyd's not blind to the defeats. (He insists he's of the 'reality-based' world.) He just has a different yardstick for assessing his progress. If you believe your society needs to undergo fundamental change, as Boyd does, and you understand that such change is not a short-term proposition, you fight your war as a series of battles, and you don't fret over every loss, because it's the fighting, not the winning, that makes you stronger. This, anyway, is Boyd's theory. 'It's interesting, our way of doing business,' he says. 'We can build a vibrant opposition even if the machinery is owned by the other side because we're not afraid to lose. In fact, win, lose or draw, we get stronger.' [emphasis mine]

Basically, MoveOn's strategy is one of non-cooperation, and Peter Beinart's (and the rest of the would-be purgers) is one of appeasement. As with abortion, it doesn't matter what Democrats say about terrorism -- if it isn't what Republicans say, Dems will be painted as soft on terror. We can't win those battles right now, so we should stop caring what names they call us and just be in opposition.