The Guardian catches on. The Kossacks still don't get it.

Melissa McEwan and Maureen McCluskey of the Guardian offer the analysis we wanted to see all during the primary battle. They detail how the left aped all of the right-wing's smears against Hillary Clinton -- in other words, they demonstrate how Markos Moulitsas created the PUMA movement.

Unfortunately, McEwan and McCluskey have offered these welcome observations after the battle.

After the battle -- but in advance of history. The Guardian has provided a preview glimpse of how writers in 2009 will explain the origins of the rift that led to Barack Obama's failure. Future pundits will point to Kossack behavior in 2008 as a cautionary tale: If you want to lose in the general, run a smear campaign during the primary.

A sampler:

Clinton was suddenly a bitch, a witch, the Queen of Hearts "who has parasitically attached herself to the legacy and record of" her husband, the screech on the blackboard with an elitist trademark laugh. "Hitlery," "Hildebeast," and "Billary" - staples of 1990s criticisms of the feminist First Lady have returned with a vengeance. She was a monster, the devil in a pantsuit, targeted with dehumanizing and eliminationist rhetoric to which liberal bloggers used to object when the right used it against liberals, but apparently now consider okay, as long as it's only directed at a candidate they don't like.

One diarist on Daily Kos even provided a helpful guide to all the scandals of the Clinton years, with ratings from one to 10 based on scandal level and the level of Hillary Clinton's involvement.

Some of the scandal mentions were deployed defensively, in order to deflect attention away from Obama's own alleged scandals: When the press began to pay attention to Obama's association with Tony Rezko, supporters raised the complaint that insufficient attention was being paid to Whitewater, the Clintons' fateful failed Arkansas land deal, despite a multi-million dollar investigation that found no wrongdoing having been completed a decade earlier.

By April, the blogfather Kos himself was agreeing that Clinton wasn't even to be considered a Democrat anymore.

Other sources of the attacks of the 1990s found fresh credibility, as long as they were smearing the Clintons. Many of the Clintons' foes on the Left uncritically accepted rumors and claims pushed by Matt Drudge and Rush Limbaugh because they reflected poorly on the Clintons, rushing, for example, to condemn Hillary Clinton for disseminating a photo of Obama in Somali garb, not considering that the source of the claim that the photo came from the Clinton campaign was none other than Matt Drudge (a claim that has since been debunked, but persists nevertheless). And many eager to find fault with the Clintons believed that Bill Clinton had appeared on Rush Limbaugh's radio show and granted an interview to his guest-host, Mark Davis (the interview was actually recorded by a service and sold so that local interviewers could dub their own voices over the interviewer's questions). In addition, they swallowed whole Limbaugh's claim that his "Operation Chaos," in which he asked his listeners to vote for Clinton in the primaries in order to mess with the nominating process, was effective and believed that this was tantamount to an endorsement of Clinton by the right wing.

Meanwhile, a hatchet job on Bill Clinton in Vanity Fair - rife with rumor and speculation, either unsourced or anonymously sourced, precisely the kind of journalism the Left blogosphere would once have almost universally rejected, irrespective of its target - was peddled by some progressives as though it were fact. And we were meant to care what the Moonie Times had to say about ancient Clinton scandals.

There's much more -- including a guest appearance by Vince Foster! Vince Foster! Vince Foster!, followed by the great Clintonian death threat against Barack Obama. Oddly, the Guardian neglects to mention the "darkened video" smear.

And still the progressives will not admit that they created PUMA through their repulsive behavior. Here's a recent Cheeto-approved diary which attempts to ridicule the PUMAs. Naturally, everyone in the movement is presumed to be female, and presumed to be a Hillary brainwashee. Thus, the writer (one "Try Me Now") attempts to pummel the PUMAfolk with the very same ultra-sexist language that kick-started the movement.

The piece allegedly provides a PUMA lexicon. A few examples:

Pity Blog: A once-sensible blog driven to the brink of poutrage and insanity by the loss of Hillary Clinton to Barack Obama.

Poutrage: A neologism describing an emotion invented by Pumas. Poutrage is a combination of sulking and anger, most frequently exhibited by Pumas when placed in contact with Obama supporters. Symptoms include tears of rage, stuffing one's ears with tissues, and incoherent screaming about inadequate black men.

Cougar: A woman in her late thirties or forties who frequents bars and clubs, prowling for much younger men. Cougars are often confused with Pumas, due to their shared feline nomenclature, but they are very different things.

The progs still think that they can achieve unity through dehumanization and sexist insult. I'll say it again: These people are so fucking arrogant that they cannot feign remorse even when doing so would help them tactically.

Keep it up, boys. PUMA's poll numbers are growing, and Obama's numbers are slipping. If you want to know the responsible party, look in the mirror.