Steven Clemons http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/ has a piece at his site noting a July 6 LA Times lead editorial headlined "Purging Antiwar Democrats".

He titles his entry "Purging Pro-Iraq War Democrats" and says: "First of all, editorialists should stop referring to everyone who opposes the IRAQ WAR as 'anti-war'...This is not a battle between pacifists and hawks within progressive circles."

Exactly.

I might go beyond that and say this is not simply a battle between pro and anti-Iraq war proponents within the Democratic party, although that is the root substantive policy issue triggering the battle.

Rather, it is a battle between, on the one hand, Democrats who go out of their way to trash (on this issue, the hefty majority of)those who disagree with them within the Democratic party and by implication the Democratic party as a whole, versus, on the other hand, those who find civil dissent within the party a highly problematical reality from moral, governing and campaigning points of view, but party-bashing wholly beyond the pale at this point and unacceptable.

The Democratic roots are fed up with party bashing and one of the meanings of the Lamont challenge is that those who engage in party-bashing are henceforth encouraged to take note.

There is, by contrast, nowhere near the level of antipathy towards a number of other Democrats who have supported the war in various ways but not engaged in party bashing. Examples are Edwards, even before he said he was mistaken and 'apologized' for his war vote, and Kerry, long before he has become aggressive in pushing for a timeline for troop withdrawal.

The level of anger among Democrats against fellow Democrats who have supported the war seems to be pretty much proportionate to the level of Democrat-bashing the individual has engaged in. Thus, Biden is despised by many within the party, although not quite as much as Lieberman, it seems.

The notable exception to this pattern at this point is of course Hillary Clinton.