Inevitable squabbling over 2010 by panicky Dems begins

Democrats ought to “acknowledge that the agenda of the party’s most liberal supporters has not won the support of a majority of Americans — and, based on that recognition, to steer a more moderate course on the key issues of the day, from health care to the economy to the environment to Afghanistan,” Daley argued.

A response came from longtime Democratic strategist and former top AFL-CIO official Steve Rosenthal, who without citing Daley by name, wrote in a piece Tuesday for POLITICO that such fretting amounted to what Obama campaign manager David Plouffe famously described as the “bed-wetting” of party elites at any real or perceived down moment during last year’s campaign.

Rosenthal offered his own prescription for the party: “Stop overanalyzing 2009 losses in Virginia and New Jersey, where Democrats had two candidates with serious ‘issues.’ Stop talking about needing to move to the center to win back independent voters. Stop complaining that the Obama surge voters — those younger voters, African-Americans, Latinos and single women who came out in record numbers in ’08 — didn’t vote in ’09 and won’t vote again in 2010. Start legislating, start organizing and start mobilizing.”

But for some centrist Democrats, it’s exactly how much the party has been legislating, or at least spending, that has them worried.