AUSTIN -- The differences between the Democratic Leadership Council and many of the liberal bloggers in attendance at Netroots Nation were clarified as DLC chairman Harold Ford Jr. and DailyKos founder Markos Moulitsas held a moderated discussion in front of most of the conference attendees.

While Ford and Moulitsas respectfully agreed and disagreed on issues and overall strategies of the Democratic Party, Ford was assailed during the question-and-answer session that followed, with one questioner (who referred to him as "Senator Ford") calling him a right wing shill and attacking him for his previous work as a Fox News analyst.

The overall mood of the convention -- from what attendees and Moulitsas himself are saying -- is that the members of the netroots don't see themselves as the left wing-extended, as many regard the liberal online community to be; but rather they feel they're representative of mainstream America.

"There's a real huge misconception in the traditional media about who we are as a voting group," Moulitsas said. "And I say 'traditional' because we're the mainstream. From healthcare to Iraq to national security to intelligence to education."

The No. 1 issue, so it seems, is not FISA or healthcare, it's accountability of elected officials. This is where Moulitsas and Ford appeared to disagree. Not that Ford didn't advocate accountability, but he noted that it was difficult for someone from one state or congressional district to take a representative from somewhere else to task for the way they vote.

"I disagree with Markos on this point," Ford said. "I hope that if we look at challenging Democrats in 2010 -- there may be those that deserve to be challenged -- I only ask that there's a clear criteria for what that means. Because if you're asking my friend Travis Childers down there in Mississippi to vote on guns in a certain way, he won't win." Childers surprisingly won a special election earlier this year to fill the remainder of Republican Roger Wicker's term in Mississippi's 1st District, parts of which include suburbs of Memphis.

Moulitsas responded by noting that he didn't begin the campaign against Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman in 2006 -- when he supported Lieberman's primary challenger, Ned Lamont -- it was voters in the state who were unhappy with him.

On Barack Obama, and the recent uproar within the netroots community on his vote for the FISA bill, Moulitsas said the netroots weren't upset because he was moving to the center of the political spectrum, "it's because he was not moving to the center. There was no popular support for this bill." Ford noted that "When you run for president..you're running to represent everyone," not just liberals or conservatives.

Moulitsas said the netroots would get over Obama's FISA vote and support him for president, and that they wouldn't necessarily oppose a candidate based on one position. "What we really don't like are Democrats who are afraid to be Democrats. And people like Jon Tester and Jim Webb -- they're not afraid to be Democrats. We disagree on occasion, but they're not afraid to be Democrats. And that's what we're looking for. We're not looking for ideological purity."