The latest round of tit-for-tat regarding Barack Obama’s membership in the Marxist New Party just kicked up a notch today.

Stanley Kurtz responded to Ben Smith, late of the Obama White House water-carrying Politico, and now manning its newest propaganda branch at Buzzfeed.

Smith is not conceding any ground to Kurtz’s newly-unearthed documentation proving Obama’s New Party membership.

In true progressive fashion, Smith moved the goalposts. Kurtz writes:

Smith concedes that the new documents contradict the Obama campaign’s claim that he never sought the New Party’s endorsement. Yet Smith still gives far too much credence to the absurd claim of former New Party head Joel Rogers that the New Party had no members.

Kurtz offers two proofs:

A memo of September 3, 1993 to “Interested Parties” from “ZAP” (almost certainly ACORN and national New Party political director Zach Pollett) is labeled “Re: August ‘93 New Party Membership Report.” There follows a chart listing the numbers of New Party members in each area of the country and targets for offering local membership groups official New Party “charters.” This charters meant formal recognition from the national office for a given local, and the right of that local to send representatives to the party’s governing council. The chart is followed by a “Membership Recruitment Analysis.”

A Chicago New Party internal memo from 1994 by one of the group’s organizers makes note of a query by “KK” (almost certainly Chicago New Party leader and ACORN-controlled SEIU local 880 head Keith Kelleher): “from KK: is New Party paperwork straight to the national NP on mem lists? yes”

What this evidence shows is that, not only did the Chicago New Party chapter have members, but contrary to what Rogers continues to claim, this was not some quirk of the Chicago local that the national leaders could have known nothing about. On the contrary, it was crucial for actual or aspiring local chapters to get, keep, and increase members if they were to receive recognition and perks from the national party. Rogers’s continuing claim that he has “no idea” what New Party membership means lacks all credibility. Yet Smith continues to give him credence.

But there is more. The web archives are most revealing.

Michael Fisby reported on the New Party members on November 1, 1995, at Black Enterprise:

The little-known New Party has about 5,000 members, half of whom are black, and has run candidates in 115 elections, from school boards to zoning commissions. They’ve won an astonishing 77 races.

Micah L. Sifry outlined the nationwide spread of New Party chapters February 10, 1997, in the online progressive rag, The Nation:

The New Party is active just in New York, but it is the only group with dues-paying members (a hundred each in Brooklyn and Long Island chapters) and boasts the only paid organizer in the field. …

The New Party elected a member to Congress Democrat Danny Davis of Chicago, won fifteen mostly nonpartisan races in several states, and nearly succeeded in revising the charter of Maryland’s Montgomery County to allow a simple majority vote to increase funding for education and social services. Furthermore, the city of St. Paul, Minnesota, has just passed living-wage ordinance as a result of New Party efforts, and chapters are active in the Madison, Wisconsin, mayoral race and council races in Chicago, New York and Washington, D.C.

Ball’s in your court, Ben.