"Barbara Ehrenreich, super-idiot. I like the sound of that: Barbara Ehrenreich, SUPER-idiot."

A number of you have insisted that I read Barbara Ehrenreich's hit piece on Hillary -- a piece which located HC at “the sinister heart of the international right.”

Actually, Ehrenreich is the one who has been doing the work of the right. In 2000, she did her best to get George W. Bush elected.

By now, we’ll assume that everyone sees how badly many pundits misjudged when they insisted, during Campaign 2000, that Bush and Gore were two peas in a pod. Needless to say, Ehrenreich was one of those brainiacs. Indeed, in the November 20, 2000 Time (published on November 13), she was happily boasting about her bad judgment.

Some of you have chided me for being unwilling to vote for Obama, should he win the nomination. These same critics think that it was perfectly fine for the Nader-enchanted Ehrenreich to write in 2000:

They didn't even notice us Naderites for months—until, of course, their candidate decided to prove he isn't "wooden" by demonstrating how fast he could sink. Then, quicker than you could say, "Florida's Electoral College votes," that great, flabby, inchoate entity, the Democratic Party, morphed into a disciplined Leninist organization, dispatching its leading cadre with the message, "Vote for Nader, and you'll never eat lunch in this country again."

According to Ehrenreich, you can't complain about W's win in 2000, because Gore and Bush were as alike as makes no difference.

What I fear most about a Gore victory--yes, I said victory--is its almost certainly debilitating effect on progressives and their organizations.

Yes, in 2000, many lefties really were that stupid. Ehrenreich's foolishness is not what astounds me: Fools, like the poor, are with us always. What stuns me is that no-one on the left holds her history against her.

According to Ehrenreich, Hillary is a foul rightist for supporting something called the Workplace Religious Freedom Act, a proposed piece of legislation co-sponsored by John Kerry, known leader of the international rightist movement. Kerry supports Obama, which only proves just how sneaky those international rightist bastards can be. (He was motivated when he heard from two constituents who were forced to work on Christmas.)

We have previously discussed how Ehrenreich attacked Hillary on religious grounds. Ehrenreich swiped all of her material from a single (bad) article by another writer who, in turn, relied on a single (unnamed) source -- who did not say what Ehrenreich would have you believe she said. In prog-vision, it is fair to attack Hillary (a boring old Methodist) for her religious dalliances -- which have gone in all sorts of directions over the years -- yet it is dastardly to mention how Obama lied about Wright.

Why? Because, unlike the fiendish Gore, Obama doesn't associate with those dreadful international rightists.

Well, okay, except for Austan Goolsbee, Obama's chief economic advisor. He's as much of an unfettered free trade enthusiast as Dubya is. And then there's Jeff Liebman, the Cato Institute's favorite guy. He wants to privatize Social Security.

You'd think that a troop like that would not make Ehrenreich swoon. But rationalization springs eternal in the Naderite breast.

General Merrill McPeak doesn't seem like the kind of guy who normally would appeal to a former Naderite. McPeak is the fellow who recently smeared Bill Clinton with that "McCarthy" remark. In the 1991 Iraq war, Former Air Force Chief of Statt McPeak -- a Poppy appointee -- initiated the infamous "bomb now, die later" campaign agaisnt civilians:

On top of the massive bombing, we have now a new kind of war: bomb now, die later. The precision bombs which did manage to hit their targets destroyed precisely the life-sustaining economic infrastructure without which Iraqis would soon die from disease and malnutrition. George Bush's remark on February 6, 1991, that the air strikes have "been fantastically accurate" can only mean that the destruction of the civilian economic infrastructure was, indeed, the desired target and that the U.S. either made no distinction between military and civilian targets or defined the military area in such a broad manner as to include much civilian property. In both cases, it is a war crime.

(By the by, McPeak is also a member of the CFR, if you're into that sort of conspiracy theory -- which I am not. And yes, I do know that a Rense article has made much the same point. I do not link to Rense; the information is easily verifiable elsewhere.)

But the Savior From Illinois embraces McPeak, and so McPeak is thereby rendered cool. Al Gore, on the other hand, is the devil. Or so sayeth Ehrenreich. Bill and Hillary made millions off of Whitewater, and they killed Vince Foster! Vince Foster! Vince Foster! Or so say the Kossacks. And Bill did to black people what he did to Monica. Or so says the Reverend Wright.

Have I told you lately how much I have come to loathe progressives?

God, I wish Carol Moseley Braun were running. I could support her without hearing cries of racism or sexism. And I like her.