"MoveOn Didn't Even Want Us to Go Into Afghanistan..."

Hillary Clinton's being hammered over at the Huffington Post for "slamming" Democratic Party activists at a campaign fundraiser in February.

Check it out, as Clinton apparently took down MoveOn.org for its radical antiwar defeatism (via Memeorandum):

At a small closed-door fundraiser after Super Tuesday, Sen. Hillary Clinton blamed what she called the "activist base" of the Democratic Party -- and MoveOn.org in particular -- for many of her electoral defeats, saying activists had "flooded" state caucuses and "intimidated" her supporters, according to an audio recording of the event obtained by The Huffington Post.

"Moveon.org endorsed [Sen. Barack Obama] - which is like a gusher of money that never seems to slow down," Clinton said to a meeting of donors. "We have been less successful in caucuses because it brings out the activist base of the Democratic Party. MoveOn didn't even want us to go into Afghanistan. I mean, that's what we're dealing with. And you know they turn out in great numbers. And they are very driven by their view of our positions, and it's primarily national security and foreign policy that drives them. I don't agree with them. They know I don't agree with them. So they flood into these caucuses and dominate them and really intimidate people who actually show up to support me."

While I admire Hillary's candor, I doubt that her supporters are dramatically more pro-war than Obama's. It's an interesting empirical question, since the recent debate over Obama's "bitter" comments have focused attention on the relative constituencies of the candidates - Clinton doing better with lower-income working class voters, and Obama with blacks and the youth cohort.

Nevertheless, polls usually show 8 out of 10 Democrats supporting antiwar positions, so MoveOn speaks for them.

Perhaps those in attendance at the fundraiser were realist DLC-types, more inclined to maintaining a forward role for American power internationally.

Either that, or this is just more Clinton pandering. New constituency, new tune. What can you do?

BTW, Don't miss Jane Hamsher's piling on as well, where she notes:

MoveOn may not have opposed military action in Afghanistan (according to Eli Pariser in the Washington Post) but I did, because I was quite certain George Bush would bungle it and we'd just wind up spending billions on a bunch of junk that would make his buddies rich and a lot of poor people in the poorest country in the world would die senselessly.

That's classic. Hamsher would've had no problem invading Afghanistan in 2001 had Al Gore been in the White House, right, with the hated Joe Lieberman as V.P.?