"The Blogfather"

Michael Scherer runs down Jerome Armstrong, a defender of the blogosphere and Mark Warner.

Even with the DLC ties, Armstrong, who is employed by Warner's Forward Together PAC, has been remarkably effective in getting his boss a welcoming reception on key sites like DailyKos and MyDD. In national newspaper interviews and Op-Eds, Moulitsas regularly trumpets Warner as a favored 2008 contender, along with Feingold, giving the governor the hip sheen of a rising Internet populist. Armstrong has gone so far as to post Warner's picture in a cover box on MyDD, a space that features famous liberal leaders like Thurgood Marshall and Bill Clinton. Inside the Warner campaign, Armstrong's success has earned him the nickname "Ambassador of Kwan," a nod to the adrenaline-filled sports agent in the film "Jerry Maguire." "I think you can argue that the Net and the population online has sort of matured, beyond the initial -- call them ultra-partisans that were with Dean," Armstrong told me. "The spectrum of people, as the number increases, grows to reflect the Democratic Party online."

Such pronouncements have outraged a few liberal bloggers, who see Warner's middle-way pragmatism as just another version of the Democrat lite, which they blame for the conservative takeover of government. In a recent post on his blog, Bob Brigham, a former employee of Armstrong and former blogger on Swing State Project, wrote that the netroots would never unite around a candidate associated with the DLC. "Hiring a netroots coordinator to talk at bloggers while using the DLC content isn't going to get a candidate anywhere," he argued in a reference to Warner and Armstrong. "What is changing about Democratic Party politics isn't just the container, but the content." It is a debate that has quickly become personal. In the comments section of several blogs, readers have charged that Armstrong has traded on his reputation -- and his friendship with Moulitsas and other bloggers at MyDD -- to further his political consulting business.

Armstrong's friendship with Moulitsas, whose Web site attracts more traffic than the next three largest liberal blogs combined, is the topic of extensive discussion on DailyKos and other sites. The pair's friendship dates back to 2002, and the early days of the Dean campaign, when Moulitsas began blogging for Armstrong's MyDD, the home page for many of Dean's early supporters. In addition to the Hackett posts, bloggers have wondered if Armstrong's work for Warner caused Moulitsas to abandon his once ferocious campaign to shame any Democrat who associated with the DLC. "We need to make the DLC radioactive," Kos wrote in August 2005. "No calls for a truce will be brooked."

Moulitsas says he does not identify Warner with the DLC, especially when compared to other prospective presidential candidates. As for the lack of recent rants against the organization, he says he no longer rails against the DLC because he does not want to raise its profile. "I realized that the more I talked about them the more relevant they became," he said. "That was my realization last summer." As for his friendship with Armstrong, Moulitsas makes no apologies. "There is no doubt that Jerome impacts my thinking and my thinking impacts his," he said. "The fact is that Jerome and I talk a lot."

Next week, Warner will be given another opportunity in Las Vegas, at YearlyKos, the first national liberal blogger convention. According to the schedule, Warner is the only presumptive presidential candidate who is scheduled to address the entire convention, as the host of a Saturday lunch. He will appear in person, without any bells or whistles, without online video streams or blog endorsements. Just like politicians of old, he will have to take his message directly to the people."