There's an interesting debate bubbling away in the lib blogosphere over who should get more credit for the Dem win, the netroots or the DCCC's Rahm Emanuel. The reason the argument's noteworthy is that it roughly foreshadows some of the coming battles over who has cracked the secret code of how best Dems can convert the party's gains into a durable majority.

In the crudest of summaries, the battle essentially lines up like this: Some say the netroots deserve credit because they had the guts, foresight and online organizational clout to push quirky but principled candidates whose strongly articulated opinions slowly generated appeal among voters. Others point out Rahm's fundraising helped "netroots" candidates at least as much as the bloggers did, and note Rahm's successful pragmatic candidate-recruitment. A third school of thought holds there's plenty of credit to go around and the two camps actually complement each other.

A quick wrap-up of opinion on all sides of the argument after the jump.

Rick Perlstein:

The Democrats have won back the House. Rahm Emanuel, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), nearly tripped over himself on the way to the microphone to claim the credit. In fact, while the tidal wave in the House looks like a bit of strategic genius by Emanuel--and pundits are starting to call it that way (Howard Fineman on MSNBC noted that the Democrats even picked up a seat in Kentucky, where the 3rd District candidate was John Yarmuth--"Emanuel's fourth choice!" Fineman exclaimed, as if in awe of the power possessed by Emanuel's mere table scraps)--in race after race, it actually represents the apotheosis of forces Emanuel has doubted all long: the netroots...

The bloggers, blunt as they may be, think they have a better plan for building a lasting Democratic majority. Last night's results suggest the rest of us should start taking it seriously.

Ryan Lizza:

With all due respect to Rick Perlstein, his piece about Rahm Emanuel and the bloggers is highly unpersuasive. His evidence that Democrats owe their victory to the "netroots" -- whatever that really means -- rather than to the DCCC, boils down to the fact that five candidates disliked by liberal bloggers had the nerve to lose their races (Mike Weaver (KY-02), Ken Lucas (KY-04), Christine Jennings (FL-13), Dan Seals (IL-10), and Tammy Duckworth (IL-06)). Putting aside the fact that Duckworth was in fact a blogger favorite, what is the evidence that alternative candidates would have succeeded in these districts? Well, Perlstein doesn't say. But griping about five races that didn't pan out when Democrats just won at least 29 seats, seems to miss the point of what happened yesterday.

Later in his piece Perlstein gives ten examples of victorious netroots-approved candidates that he seems to believe the DCCC somehow abandoned. He hints that the bloggers put these candidates over the top. "The thing all these successful candidates share in common is backing by the same dirty-necked bloggers and netroots activists that pundits have been calling the political kiss of death," he writes.

I suppose that's one thing they had in common. Others might look at Perlstein's list of winners and say the thing they had in common, with the exception of one, is that the DCCC dumped tons of money, strategic advice, and fundraising assistance into their races.

Noam Scheiber:

There's simply no way liberal, Netroots-friendly candidates could have won most of the districts for which Rahm recruited moderate-to-conservative candidates...

That's not to say the Netroots didn't play an important role in this election. I just think Rick sets up a bit of a false dichotomy. Rahm did a solid job recruiting competitive candidates for the most obviously competitive races--which, as head of the Democrats' campaign committee, is what he needed to focus on. The Netroots did a solid job of identifying and funding candidates in districts where Democrats were a longer shot--the kinds of high-risk prospects you wouldn't necessarily want your congressional committee worrying about. The roles of the Netroots and the party committee were actually pretty complementary in that respect, which is the way you'd hope it would be.

Zachary Roth:

Beyond the rightness or wrongness of Emanuel's strategy, the larger point is that there's no need to set up the netroots and the Democratic establishment in opposition to each other. Many of the most successful Democratic candidates — Tester and Webb, for example — had strong backing both from the blogosphere and the party apparatus. And with a victory this big, surely there's enough credit to go around.

Kevin Drum:

This is something we should all stitch on our foreheads. Yesterday's results were a tribute to Howard Dean's 50-state strategy and a tribute to Emanuel's fundraising ability and general energy level. I note that Dean said nice things about Emanuel last night, and I hope Emanuel returns the favor. Bickering is bad enough when you lose, but it's even worse when you win.

Sam Rosenfeld:

In the case of John Hall in New York and many others, the DCCC attention and money came relatively late in the campaign as the races began to tighten and the DCCC expanded its roster of targets, and one can thus argue both that activists are the true source of such eventual victories and that the DCCC should have done more sooner; but each individual candidate always wants more resources from the DCCC and always thinks they're not getting enough fast enough, and weighing counterfactual claims becomes pretty difficult.

And on a somewhat separate topic, Kos:

Memo to the media, pundits

Dear know-nothings,

I know most of you are stupid, and proud to remain that way.

But the Netroots backed more than just Ned Lamont.

For example, Jim Webb and Jon Tester in the Senate, and dozens more in the House.

Jim Webb, for example, said this about the netroots:

The netroots have been a tremendous help to my campaign and a huge inspiration to me personally.

I am where I am in large part because of their support.

So Lieberman won. Lots of our candidates lost. Lots of them won. It's called elections.

Hugs and kisses.

kos

Here's my contribution: This is a very nice thing to be arguing about.