"I get fairly frantic when I contemplate the idiocy of these louts."

Maureen Dowd doesn't want you to vote for Hillary Clinton. What more evidence do you need? Vote for Hillary Clinton. Fans of The Daily Howler (a site which mysteriously disappeared from my blogroll -- sorry!) will recall how Dowd continually spread lies about Al Gore in 2000. Same shit; different election.

We've heard so many lies about both Clintons that I'm surprised to learn that Hillary maintains a slim lead over Sanders in a national poll. The sad truth is that smears work. The first time we were subjected to an anti-Clinton smear-barrage was 1994, and the results were disastrous for the Democrats -- for democracy.

The Howler offers a remarkably good piece which destroys the mythology surrounding the 1994 crime bill -- you know, the bill that all of those goddamned smug know-it-all BernieBots keep lying about:

The legislation was broadly embraced by nonwhite voters, more enthusiastically even than by white voters. About 58 percent of nonwhites supported it in 1994, according to a Gallup poll, compared with 49 percent of white voters.

Precisely. I recall those days, as the smirky young Bots do not. At the time, black leaders often complained (rightly) that the cops were ignoring black neighborhoods, thereby allowing the criminal element to take control.

In the 1980s, many white people complained about crime but did not want to spend the money required to combat it. The Republican establishment had no incentive to take action, since high crime rates translated into increased votes for conservative candidates.

Once again, let's recite some points which the BernieBots force us to repeat ad infinitum: Increased African American incarceration is almost entirely the result of changes in state laws, not the 1994 bill. Bernie Sanders voted for the same bill that Bill Clinton signed. The bill passed only because it was pushed through by the Congressional Black Caucus. And the bill arguably did much more more good than bad -- for example, it gave us the Violence Against Women Act and provided funds for community policing. (If we had more of the latter, the cops here in Baltimore would be hated a lot less.)

The BernieBots lied through their fucking teeth when they claimed that Bill Clinton signed that bill in order to depress the African American vote. Ludicrous! Why on earth would the Clintons seek to reduce a solidly Democratic voting bloc -- one which has been the bedrock of Hillary's support in this cycle?

Again I ask: Has Barack Obama done anything to reform the criminal justice system? If not, then why don't the BernieBots assail our current president?

A must-read. Dakinikat is one of my all-time favorite bloggers, and her latest is superb. Of Sanders:

How can some one running for President be so total unaware of basics? How many more My Pet Goat moments do we get from this guy before his cult buys a clue?

This seems to be a typical Bernie thing. Anything that’s not within his old school class war frame isn’t worth investigating. He’ll just toss out a vote eventually and then we’ll hear how his judgement is far superior because Iraq War vote. At what point do folks hold him responsible for everything else?

The one thing I hear continually on all forms of social media is that there is somehow some huge movement out there led by the Bernmeister that will spontaneously change everything including the need for sliced bread. Where the hell is it if all you can do is win outback, highly white caucus states and a couple wide open primaries? Is there evidence of any progressive insurgency? Where is there evidence that this gadfly Senator from Vermont is leading it?

Just so. The bots are convinced that young voters are the only voters, and that the young will bring about the mythical capital-R Revolution. They have fastened onto the delusion that Bernie stands a chance in the general, even though polls tell us that the word "socialist" is an absolute no-go for the majority of Americans, and even though the media has yet to go negative on Bernie (which it surely will) -- and even though we still inhabit a country in which conservatives substantially outnumber liberals. (Note: I said liberals; socialists are a small minority within that minority.)

Not only do these dimwits think that Bernie has a chance in November, they also think that everyone in the country has suddenly made a hard left turn. Yep, it would appear that folks in Texas and Arkansas have suddenly decided to read the Grundrisse and sing the Internationale, and now they're fixing to send an ultra-progressive wave of Congressfolk to DC in order to enact The Beatific Vision of The Bern. It's a new day!

As Uncle Al once said: "I get fairly frantic when I contemplate the idiocy of these louts."