The Woman in the Middle

Rep. Ellen Tauscher (D-Calif.) says she takes seriously the threat against her from the Democratic Party's liberal base. (By Lucian Perkins -- The Washington Post)

Kos and MoveOn.org founder Eli Pariser serve on the board of They Work for Us -- an issue advocacy group affiliated with Working for Us -- which also plans to focus on Democrats more conservative than their districts.

"We're not going to the Heath Shulers of the world and saying, 'We want you to be more like Barney Frank,' " Rosenthal said, referring to the liberal congressman.

But Tauscher's district is not Pelosi's San Francisco or Kos's Berkeley. It's connected to Berkeley by tunnel, but as Tauscher likes to say, everything changes when you drive through that tunnel, even the microclimate. "Suddenly it's 25 degrees warmer, there's not a cloud in the sky and you know you're in Tauscher territory," she said.

Tauscher territory is mostly soccer moms, software executives and Restoration Hardware stores. It also includes the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Travis Air Force Base and several farm towns. "Ellen's a perfect fit for that district," said Audrey Gordon, a local Democratic fundraiser. "We've got a lot of tough seats to defend this year; why on Earth would Democrats want to attack Ellen?"

Tauscher's liberal critics say she has undermined the party during the Bush years, making a fetish of bipartisanship at a time when Republicans had no interest in real compromise, demonizing the far left at a time when Democrats needed to unify against the far right. And they're still seething about her "left cliff" quote, which echoed GOP talking points before Election Day.

"She reinforces the idea that lefties are out-of-control children," said Brian Leubitz, who runs a liberal California blog called Calitics. "She provides cover for Republican extremists."

Tauscher says it's obvious that Democrats will alienate independent voters if they tack to the hard left and she won't apologize for stating the obvious. "The speaker has been indefatigable about saying she's going to govern from the center," she said. "I guess if you're looking to be offended, that's what's going to offend you."

Her rhetoric infuriates activists, who still quote her statements that she never met a trade deal she didn't like, even though she later voted against one, and that she slept fine after her 2002 vote to authorize the Iraq war, even though she now opposes it. She supports same-sex marriage, but she's not an activist's idea of a Bay Area politician: too Wall Street, too establishment, too comfortable with the Chamber of Commerce.

"You can sense her contempt for the grass roots," Leubitz said. "She really doesn't represent her district."

Doing It Her Way

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How does Tauscher represent her district?

On a typical day this month, she started with a three-hour Transportation and Infrastructure Committee markup. California faces a water crisis, and Tauscher had two water bills on the agenda that she had pushed for years. She made a point of allowing freshman Rep. Jerry McNerney (D-Calif.) to share credit on one bill; she had supported his centrist opponent in his primary, to the disgust of the Net roots, but now she was trying to help him keep his seat.

She then raced to catch the last minutes of an Armed Services Committee hearing, just in time to question Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Marine Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. As five women from the antiwar group Code Pink stood in protest, Tauscher asked two quick questions: Why didn't Bush's budget increase production of the C-17, a plane based at Travis? And how much would the president's troop increase cost?