As election nears, splits in Democratic coalition resurface

Fissures have opened over everything from tax policy and former President Bill Clinton’s off-message comments to recriminations following the party’s fiasco in the Wisconsin recall, which some say should have been avoided.

Democrats disagree over the wisdom of Obama’s attacks on Republican Mitt Romney’s private equity background at Bain Capital and are split over the proposed construction of the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada’s vast oil sands…

At the level of presidential politics, however, Democratic National Committee chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz (Fla.) had insisted prior to the vote that the contest would serve as a “dry run” for the Obama campaign in Wisconsin.

Once the results came in, her counterpart at the Republican National Committee, Reince Priebus, gleefully insisted that the battle had indeed been “a great dry run.” To his mind, the recall results had proven “Republicans have the infrastructure and enthusiasm that will help us defeat President Obama in Wisconsin.”