On the original Saturday Night Live, a skit introduced us to a "feminist" talk show called Women's Problems. All the panelists were men, and they all displayed a rather flawed understanding of feminism:

"And here's another problem women face. When they get old, they get ugly!"

That skit comes to mind whenever I read mainstream responses to the growing anti-Obama left: They just don't get it. They don't have a framework which allows them to comprehend a phenomenon outside their hardwired mental preconceptions.

Kossack "leftists" and mainstream journalists unite in their hatred of Bill Clinton. They will never understand that millions of Democrats don't share their sick and distorted view of the finest president since FDR. Thus, we get crap like this:

When former Sen. John Edwards dropped out of the presidential race, the progressive Netroots took their affections to Barack Obama, defending him against attack from Hillary Rodham Clinton and others.

This is like saying that the Manson Family had to defend Charlie from attacks mounted by Sharon Tate "and others."

Other writers may pretend that the months of ugliness and hate on Kos, DU, TPM, Huffington Post and other "progressive" outlets never occurred. But I will never forget -- and I won't let you forget either. Never forget; never forgive. A moment's forgiveness is tantamount to saying: "I will gladly swallow your shit, Mr. Moulitsas. Please lean over my face and drop another log."

Riverdaughter has another superbly written piece on the Obot response to the PUMAs:

First, the sweeties tried to debate us. Yes, they came with their personal power dynamics themed speeches about how we can all get along as long as we listened to them and stopped being such belligerent idiots. That didn’t work so well...

Listen close, and you can hear the ghostly voice of SNL's Garrett Morris trying to prove his feminist credentials: "I always liked a woman with a big butt. You know, something you can hang on to and hit with a car antenna!"

Salon's instantly-infamous piece on PUMA continues to reverberate. One of the best responses comes from a little-known blog called Peacocks and Lillies. The piece reminds us that Salon's Rebecca Traister compiled a truly bizarre list of motives -- a list which tells us more about Traister than about anyone else.

In Traister-Vision, here's what's bugging the PUMAs:

They are mad at Bill Clinton. Um, obviously.

Say what? No, you and your little prog friends are mad at Bill Clinton, Becky. PUMA folk despise the smears lobbed against both Clintons -- smears which numbskulls like Traister seem to believe. As Peacocks and Lillies puts it:

She [Traister] offers this with no comment because she knows it is a lie. Everybody in the press hates Bill Clinton, because he foiled all their perfect plans, and because they could never own him.

Here's another "PUMA Problem," as Traister sees it:

They are mad at Mark Penn.

The response:

Translation: I (Traister) still hate Mark Penn. Personally, I couldn’t care less about Mark Penn. He’s a fucking pollster, not the devil incarnate.

Becky, meet Dan Aykroyd. He was another panelist on "Women's Problems," and his cluelessness resembled yours: "Women face many problems today. I'd say the biggest one is whining."

Traister:

They are angry about rumors that Obama may choose a woman other than Hillary Clinton as his running mate.

Response:

For her, this one is all about the Vagina Voter. Which is bullshit. Women this time around had a sound, experienced candidate who happened to have a vagina, which upped the already up level of excitement. I would argue (admittedly with no proof) that very few people voted for Clinton because she was a woman–that was just a pleasant aside. However, many voters, both black and white, voted for Obama simply because he was black, and without knowing a single accomplishment he has made in his tenure in national politics, and without caring that he is completely inexperienced.

On No Quarter, another response to Traister ends with these words:

Your story uses the pronoun “they” over and over and over. Did you SPEAK WITH any of the...PUMAs? Did you call a single one? Did you exchange any e-mails with any of the major activists in the JustSayNoDeal.com and PUMA collaborative movements?

The Obot journals have published a few pieces on how to talk to the PUMA partisans. All of these pieces show them to be just as clue-free as Garrett and Dan were in that old skit. None of these pieces suggests that the progs might make some headway if they showed some humility. Here's a suggested start:

"We spread lies against Clinton. We acted like Freepers. We're sorry."

Pure ego forbids them from making this admission. Indeed, the Lightbringer himself has said that he had to "bite his tongue" in dealing with Hillary -- as though he were the offended party, as though he were on the receiving end of a smear campaign!

There's no humility in Obotland. As these reponses to Traister's piece exemplify, they remain mired in their revolting Messianic adulation of the Lightbringer (even though they no longer even try to defend him against charges of serial prevarication) and in their hatred of all things Clintonian:

I guess that's the difference between the two candidates. Obama inspires Love in his supporters. Clinton? She inspires something else in hers ...

And then we have the unkillable anyone-who-won't-worship-the-Lightbringer-must-be-a-racist meme:

Traister is engaging in anti-Obama agitprop because of her racist hatred of Obama. She has never apologized for her racist slur on "Obama boys":

http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2008/04/14/obama_supporters/

Until the Tracist apologizes or is fired, Salon has no standing to publish articles like this.

There is nothing even slightly racist at that link. The headline does not call Obama a "boy" -- and even if it did, so what? I've received literally dozens of letters (falsely) describing Hillary as "your girl."

Obots, it's time you understood that you -- not the PUMA folk, not the Republicans -- YOU are Barack Obama's worst enemies. Your odious antics have made your candidate seem toxic.