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Susan Davis reports from Austin, Texas, on Netroots Nation.

Can Democrats bridge the ideological divides within the party? A lunch keynote session at the Netroots Nation annual convention here in Austin tried to address that with a discussion between liberal DailyKos.com founder Markos Moulitsas Zuniga and the not-so-liberal Democratic Leadership Council’s Harold Ford Jr.. The answer was, well, unclear.

Sure, Moulitsas and Ford both offered platitudes about how Democrats need to come together in November to elect Sen. Barack Obama, and how the factors that unite Democrats are greater than those that divide them.

But what divides them makes them angry.

The political leanings of the crowd were skewed decidedly to the left of Ford, a former centrist U.S. House member from Tennessee who lost his 2006 Senate bid to Republican Bob Corker. Ford gamely made an agreement with Moulitsas last year following a joint appearance on “Meet the Press” that each would attend the other’s political conferences as a sign of goodwill.

The crowd in the convention hall was less generous. One questioner pressed Ford on why he has taken actions “smearing Democrats,” in part by appearing on Fox News. Ford’s response that he has “great respect and admiration” for his former Fox colleagues was met with hisses and boos. (Although he duly noted his contract is with MSNBC these days.)

Undeterred, Ford insisted, “I’m proud of my voting record” and took issue with Moulitsas’s and others’ assertions that the political mood expressed here is the mainstream of the country. “I promise you that if you would’ve come to Memphis with your positions I’d have beaten you, too,” Ford responded to the questioner.

Ford split with Moulitsas and the crowd on the issue of immunity for telephone companies in a recent overhaul of spy laws that liberals opposed but most centrist Democrats supported.

They also split over Democratic primary challenges. As a general rule, party officials don’t engage in primary fights, or back the incumbent member in a contested primary. Netroots activists often—with mixed results—try to use primary contests to oust Democratic incumbents they view unfavorably.

“Harold will not applaud this, but in 2010 we’re going to have some Democrats we mean business to in some primaries,” Moulitsas said to resounding cheers from the crowd. Ford offered that his party brethren have “a clear distinction on what that means,” noting that activists should not seek to oust candidates just because they don’t always agree with them. Liberal Democrats, he said, can’t win in many conservative Democratic districts.

Moulitsas offered up Sens. Jon Tester of Montana and Jim Webb of Virginia as two Democrats the netroots generally support because while there are policy differences between them “they aren’t afraid to be Democrats.”

Moulitsas also offered one area where he believes there is common ground. Recalling his own into-the-lion’s-den appearance at the DLC’s conference, he said he was trying not to push the envelope too far with the party’s more center wing when he slipped used an off-color epithet for Sen. Joe Lieberman. The crowd here cheered at the reference, since Lieberman—aligned with the DLC—has become a sworn enemy of many in the netroots for his support of Republican Sen. John McCain in the presidential race.

As the crowd here cheered, Moulitsas said the DLC crowd “responded the same way” when he made the derogatory Lieberman remark. Sitting across from Moulitsas on the stage, Ford stayed mum.

Stumble it!