Do You Think Trump Laughs At Evangelicals Out Loud?

See? Justin Amash isn't the only Republican standing up to Trump; he's just the only Republican in Congress standing up to Trump. Republicans For The Rule of Rule-- the 501 (c) (4) nonprofit group running that Fox TV ad above-- describes itself as "a group of life-long Republicans dedicated to defending the institutions of our republic and upholding the rule of law. We are fighting to make sure that the laws apply equally to everyone, from the average citizen to the president of the United States. We believe in fidelity to the Constitution, transparency, and the independence of prosecutors from politics."

But these "constitutionalist" types were never part of the Trump coalition. Trump doesn't give a hoot about them. His coalition are the least educated and least intelligent segment of the population-- the religionists who expect to be told what to do and couldn't begin to function without being told what to do. The evangelical vote is the Trump vote. Just yesterday, one of the top charlatans of that movement, Franklin Graham, told a right-wing website, the Western Journal, which pretends to by related to the Wall Street Journal that Trump "has honored his commitments to the faith-based community. He is pro-life, first president really in my lifetime that has been this vocal about life. I certainly appreciate that about him. He’s fulfilled his promise as it relates to conservative judges. He’s put two Supreme Court justices so far on the bench that are conservative. He’s appointed a number at lower courts. I hope that he’ll be able to do even more in that area, because that will have an impact on my childrens’ lives. If we have the right judges, it will benefit all of us." Franklin went on to repeat a whole litany of Trumpist lies the pretend "president" will run on: "I think he has done an excellent job getting people back to work, turning the economy around, defeating ISIS as a military power on the battlefield. He has done all of these things, and he’s done it very quickly... I think God was behind the last election."

And this brings us to a couple of NY Times-type conservatives, James Kirchick (a a really loathsome-- and self-loathing-- right-wing gay Jew who was a Republican-for-Hillary bigwig) and Peter Wehner, a puffed-up, self-proclaimed "expert" on religion and ethics who tries pretending God loves wars of aggression and who wrote speeches for Bill Bennett and George W. Bush. Among Christians, he's the foremost hater of the Sermon on the Mount, but is accepted by the NY Times crowd because of his disdain for Señor Trumpanzee. Before the last election he said he would never vote for Trump (nor, unlike Kirchick, Hillary) and was reviled by Trumpists for noting that their hero is "Trump is "characterized by indifference to objective truth (there are no facts, only interpretations), the repudiation of Christian concern for the poor and the weak, and disdain for the powerless... it is fair to say that there existed in the Republican Party repulsive elements, people who were attracted to racial and ethnic politics and moved by resentment and intolerance rather than a vision of the good. This group was larger than I ever imagined, and at important moments the Republican Party either overlooked them or played to them. Some may have been hoping to appeal to these elements while also containing and moderating them, to sand off the rough edges, to keep them within the coalition but not allow them to become dominant. But the opposite happened. The party guests took over the party."

Wehner has a new book out, The Death of Politics-- How to Heal Our Frayed Republic After Trump that was reviewed yesterday by Kirchick in a column titled A Man of Faith Wonders at How Evangelicals Can Support Trump. Kirchick is positively delighted to begin his review by pointing out that fellow conservative windbag is offended by the Trump presidency. "Wehner," he writes, "is horrified at the way the president uses words 'to murder the very idea of truth.' Trump, Wehner writes in The Death of Politics, his lament for the state of our civic discourse, "embodies a Nietzschean morality rather than a Christian one."

Up until the point he feigned religiosity to secure the votes of evangelical Christians, Trump would likely have agreed with this brutal character assessment. Which brings us to the other plane on which the current presidency represents an affront to Wehner: traditional morality. One of evangelical Christianity’s most thoughtful political communicators, Wehner is appalled at the way in which his coreligionists have so enthusiastically backed Trump, voting for a thrice-married, loutish beauty pageant producer in higher numbers than they did for Bush, a born-again Christian “who spoke easily and openly about his relationship with Christ.” The rise of Trump, and the slavish devotion he inspires among leading evangelicals, has forced Wehner to consider seriously something he had always deemed a secular slander: that “both politics and the Christian witness are now made worse by people of faith actively involving themselves in politics.”

Wehner attributes this degeneration to the adoption of an all-or-nothing mentality by his fellow evangelicals, for whom eight years of Barack Obama were apparently so catastrophic that a figure like Trump could emerge as the country’s improbable savior. Wehner excoriates this apocalyptic rationalization, naming and shaming a slew of evangelical personalities who have issued “defenses of Trump that range from rhapsodic to ridiculous.” He singles out the former Christian Coalition leader Ralph Reed, who privately joked about murdering Pat Buchanan during the latter’s insurgent 1996 Republican presidential primary campaign against Bob Dole, and yet is today an important ally of a president who essentially ran on Buchanan’s platform of nativism, protectionism and racial resentment.

...Though his recognition of the evangelical right’s manifold hypocrisies and corruptions is welcome, one wonders what took Wehner so long. A clue can be found in his occasionally earnest tone, visible in the expression of sincere shock that a movement that propelled the likes of Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and Jimmy Swaggart would eventually throw in its lot with a pagan who embodies the seven deadly sins.

...Aside from appeals to our better angels, The Death of Politics doesn’t offer much in the way of practical solutions to the societal ills it analyzes. But the value of this book lies less in its proposals than its example. With conservatives increasingly scorning decency as a crutch for the weak, Wehner is a model of conscientious political engagement. For that reason alone, his book should be pressed upon both those on the left who believe that the only way to “resist” the current administration is by sinking to its level, and those on the right tempted to wallow there.

Like Ted Cruz, Sean Eldridge Was Born In Canada And Like Cruz He Thinks He Can Be President

The first big New York Times coverage of Sean Eldridge's campaign for the Republican-held blue seat in the upper Hudson Valley/Catskills (NY-19) killed his race among actual progressives. This sentence went over especially badly for many: "Mr. Eldridge grew up in a middle-class community in Ohio, where both of his parents were doctors; they say he has a genuine understanding of people of modest means." Where I was from the kids with even just one parent who was a doctor were the richest members of the community-- not the ones who were of modest means. Eldridge's expensive, blue chip campaign is widely recognized as the worst-run, most embarrassing congressional campaign of 2014. He spent $6,333,592, more than double what he Republican opponent spent, and of that $4,255,000 (66%) was from his own bank account. (He spent an astounding $84.51 per vote he wound up with, nearly 4 times what his opponent spent.) Most of the rest came from his wealthy pals. Not much came from anyone of modest means.

He was recruited by Steve Israel for one reason-- the ability to self-fund, despite an obvious inability to win one of the most winnable seats the Republicans held. And Israel was happy to see Eldridge hire all the hack consultants that make the DCCC world spin round and round. One of Alex Isenstadt's first campaign reports on the 19th mentioned that Sean had turned the effort into a multimillion-dollar start-up.

It has unfolded in rapid-fire sequence. After Eldridge decided he wanted to run for office, he and Hughes in 2011 bought the first of two luxurious homes in the Hudson Valley region. Soon after, Eldridge set up a venture capital firm, Hudson River Ventures, that has provided millions in loans and equity lines to local companies. And now the first-time candidate, who’s running his first business, is touting the jobs he’s created in the blue-collar district.

“I know firsthand what it takes to support small businesses and create good jobs,” reads one pamphlet his campaign is plastering throughout the area.

...It’s difficult to size up the person behind the polished image Eldridge and his campaign are projecting to voters. He’s been running for more than half a year but remains mostly an enigma.

Congressional challengers typically seek maximum media exposure; Eldridge allows few chance encounters with the media. His campaign frequently posts pictures on his Facebook page of the candidate out and about in the district, but local reporters say they’re usually not made aware of his public schedule ahead of time. He declined to be interviewed by Politico, and the door to his campaign headquarters in Kingston was locked on a recent visit. No one answered a call on an intercom.

...Eldridge employs a team of prominent political consultants-- including media firm SKDKnickerbocker, polling outfit Global Strategy Group and veteran party operative Anne Lewis-- who carefully tend to his image. Through the end of last year [2013], he paid the three entities a total of $241,000, campaign records show.

Sean's campaign was entirely consultant dominated and they made a fortune off his grotesque loss. One, Jeff Pollock of Global Strategy Group, was used to track down the "spy" Sean insisted DWT had inside his campaign (who told us about the weekly bagels and lox deliveries from Steve Israel) by investigating Facebook patterns, although Sean confirmed the poor innocent suspect by seizing his cell phone and finding a friend of DWT on the call list! And Sean thinks-- or thought-- he was on a path to the presidency (of the United States); really. With all that money he was spending on consultants, he paid one of them to map out a long-term strategy to get him into the White House. Jamie Kirchick: "Chris Hughes and Sean Eldridge have always been entitled brats. And now the media has finally noticed."

In just the past two months, one half of this pair managed to single-handedly destroy a storied journalistic institution, while the other suffered a crushing electoral defeat in New York’s 19th Congressional District. Last week, the 31-year-old Hughes forced the resignations of both the editor and literary editor of the New Republic, whose 100th anniversary he presided over last month at a star-studded gala in Washington, D.C.

In protest of the magazine’s newly ensconced CEO’s plan to transform TNR into a “vertically integrated digital media company,” the majority of the magazine’s senior and contributing editors resigned.

Weeks before the implosion at TNR, 28-year-old Eldridge lost his congressional bid by a stunning 30 points, despite having outspent his opponent nearly 3-to-1 in a district President Obama won by 6 percentage points. The couple had purchased a $2 million home in the district expressly so that Eldridge could run there, their purchase of a $5 million mansion in the adjoining 18th having come to naught after that seat was won by another gay Democrat in 2012.

...A New York Times profile, meanwhile, set the scene at a Paris Review fundraiser hosted by the couple at Cipriani (the 42nd Street location, not the Wall Street one, where they celebrated their wedding with 400 of their closest friends). In it, a series of Manhattan literary and media bigwigs prostrated themselves before the two like nobles at a royal court.

“They are very generous with their money and time,” Richard Socarides, a former Clinton administration staffer and television pundit prattled. “They are young, rich, smart, and good-looking. It’s a pretty powerful combination.”

Powerful indeed. At their 4,000-square-foot, $5 million SoHo loft, Hughes and Eldridge hosted fundraisers for Nancy Pelosi and Andrew Cuomo, and raised money for worthy causes like gay marriage. All the while they racked up favorable coverage in the mainstream press, and even more sycophantic mentions in the gay press. In 2011, Hughes and Eldridge graced the cover of The Advocate’s “40 under 40” issue, and the following year Hughes came in at No. 28 on OUT’s “Power List.” Nearly every profile remarked upon the young men’s precocity. They possessed “wisdom beyond their years,” observed The Advocate. “The youngest old man any of us knows,” an unnamed friend of Atlantic Publisher David Bradley said of Hughes.

Earlier this year, former TNR staffer and Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank sent Hughes a fawning email in which he praised the young owner for “doing the Lord’s work” in purchasing the perpetually money-losing magazine, calling him a “21st-century Walter Lippman.”

...Eldridge’s path to fame is even more accidental. In 2010, he dropped out of law school to take up a job as communications director for a gay-rights organization, an appointment soon followed by his husband’s donation of a quarter-million dollars to the group. Nine months after Hughes told New York magazine, “He’s 26. He’s going to do all kinds of things in politics, but I don’t think there’s any rush,” to run for office, Eldridge announced his congressional candidacy.

Even by the already money-drenched standards of American politics, the Eldridge campaign was a jaw-dropping spectacle to behold. In preparation for a campaign, Eldridge established Hudson River Ventures, essentially a vote-buying apparatus masquerading as an economic-development project, to win over small-business owners and their employees. He then traipsed around the district dispensing “investments” ranging from $50,000 to $500,000 to local companies. The couple then bought a property in the town of Shokan, in New York’s 19th District, just months after Eldridge told the Times that it was their original mansion, in the 18th, where “we put down roots, where we want to have a family.”

Eldridge retained SKDKnickerbocker, a heavy-hitting Democratic political consulting firm, which also happened to be doing public-relations work for his investment fund. “Candidates who employ people in the districts they’re running in enjoy some advantages. What’s so unusual about this situation is that he’s being so transparent about it,” Paul Herrnson, executive director of the University of Connecticut’s Roper Center for Public Opinion Research, told Politico. Lacking any sense of irony, Eldridge made campaign-finance reform a signature plank.

To no one’s surprise except, perhaps, the pampered couple, Eldridge lost the race to the Republican incumbent 65 percent to 35 percent. In light of the massive amounts of money Hughes dumped into the race, it was one of the most humiliating defeats in the last election cycle. But Eldridge’s political ambition is not likely to be satiated. Several years ago, before he ever announced his candidacy, a source close to Eldridge told me that he had SKDKnickerbocker draw up a plan for him to become the first openly gay president of the United States (Eldridge was born in Canada and until recently held both Canadian and Israeli citizenship, which would make it difficult to overcome the Constitution’s natural-born citizenship clause). Expect the couple to find another mansion in a safe Democratic district where an aging representative is expected to retire.

One suspects that had this couple been heterosexual and conservative, the initial media attention would not have been quite so toadying. We would have no doubt been treated to endless stories about how a “rapacious” “right-wing” millionaire, who had done nothing to earn his fortune, set out to destroy one of liberalism’s great institutions all the while enabling his power-mad spouse to “buy” a seat in Congress. But everything about the Hughes-Eldridge pairing militated against such a portrayal. The prospect of a fresh-faced, conventionally liberal, gay couple hit every media sweet spot.

Hughes and Eldridge are not “role models for a future generation of… gay people,” as The Advocate absurdly stated. They are little more than entitled brats who, like most fabulously wealthy arrivistes who attain their fortunes through sheer luck rather than hard work, are used to getting everything they want, when they want it, and throw temper tantrums when they don’t.

In their elitism and sense of entitlement, they represent much of what liberals are supposed to despise. Most in the media and gay community were perfectly willing to ignore this imposture when the couple was throwing their money at the right causes and dispensing jobs to their journalist and political consultant friends. Hughes and Eldridge were beneficiaries of a corrupt and compliant media and political establishment that grasped at their filthy lucre. Only now that the fairy tale has come crashing down-- a magazine destroyed, a devastating political loss suffered-- is the herd willing to admit the obvious.

What Should Gays Do About The Democratic Party Problem?

Older gay readers can remember a time when one could pick up a gay magazine or weekly and have no trouble distinguishing between the ad copy and the editorial. Those days are part of the past and so, apparently, is the grand dame of national gay magazines, The Advocate (1967), which I am informed is no longer being offered as a stand alone print subscription. The publishers are "pleased" to let me know that my subscription to The Advocate "has been transferred to OUT magazine and I will "now receive OUT's Advocate Edition which premiers within the issue" they mailed me a few days ago. The front cover features a sassy donkey with the title: Gays to the DNC: "Kiss My Ass" followed by the subtitled, "A boycott of the Democratic Party gains momentum." The story was written by notorious-- albeit confused-- Democrat basher, Jamie Kirchick. Once the scourge of Ron Paul-- who he claimed in one of his first investigative hit pieces, is anti-gay, anti-Black, anti-Semitic, obsessed with conspiracies and "sympathetic" to far right militia movements-- now Jamie's the in house, gay anti-leftist for right-wing propaganda sheets like The Weekly Standard and Commentary. The dying or reborn Advocate picked themselves a real winner for this month's cover story.

The disappointment with the Obama Administration that is so palpable among progressives, is even more advanced in the politicized segment of the gay community. Many gays are now focusing on the Democrats' slow walk and tepid response to their issues, rather than on the somewhat less present existential threats from the right. Kirchick is happy to throw some gasoline on the fire without a mature look at the political context: "They’re fond of your checkbooks-- and deaf to your demands for equal rights."

In the wake of the Maine defeat, a coterie of liberal bloggers and activists called for a temporary moratorium on DNC donations. The fledgling movement, which has adopted the motto “Don’t Ask, Don’t Give” and has attracted the likes of legendary gay rights activist David Mixner, hopes to discourage donations to the party until the passage of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act and the repeal of both “don’t ask, don’t tell” and the Defense of Marriage Act. In so doing, these activists are hoping to reshape-- if not completely upset-- the relationship between gays and the Democratic Party. 

...With the 2010 midterm congressional election looking increasingly perilous for progressives, thus making the imperative to pass pro-gay legislation before then all the more urgent, a picture is beginning to emerge of a Democratic president and political party that are, as Szekeres describes them, happy to take money and votes from gay people but less inclined to spend political capital on their behalf. So far, the only piece of significant gay rights legislation to pass Congress and receive the president’s signature is the expansion of the hate-crimes act, which was ultimately appended to a defense spending bill. Hearings on ENDA and the repeal of DADT have been delayed, and the prospects for getting DOMA off the books are dimming. Perhaps candidate Obama made too many promises; even some of his strongest supporters acknowledge that his early guarantees for change may be coming back to haunt him. “I wish he had said he was a ‘firm and steady ally’ rather than a ‘fierce advocate,’” says one prominent gay Democrat.

Losses on the state level have only darkened impressions of the DNC in the eyes of some gay activists. In addition to the revocation of equal marriage rights in Maine, the New York state senate rejected a marriage equality bill in December, with eight Democrats joining all of the chamber’s Republicans. At press time it appears marriage in New Jersey, which once looked like a surefire bet, may not make it through the legislature. “Many of us in the progressive movement just want to throw up,” Steven Goldstein of Garden State Equality told Newark’s Star-Ledger. “Democrats put out one hand to ask for money, and with the other they stab you in the back.”

Sensing the rumblings of discontent among a loyal constituency, the party has not been silent. Partly in response to the brewing anger, gay DNC treasurer Andrew Tobias recently sent out an e-mail containing what he termed a “nicely growing list” of pro-gay initiatives sponsored by the Obama administration. The message was long, but nearly all of the measures-- the decision to sign on to a United Nations declaration condemning the criminalization of homosexuality, a presidential proclamation celebrating Gay Pride Month, the appointment of an openly gay ambassador to New Zealand-- were largely symbolic.

...Gay voters’ frustration with the Democratic Party in general, and Obama in particular, is one piece of a larger narrative of progressive disenchantment with the first year of the new administration. Members of the president’s liberal base have experienced a rude awakening: They are not as powerful as they thought they were. Despite all their efforts, Congress failed to pass a health care package with a public option, and the president has chosen to escalate the war in Afghanistan with a surge of 30,000 additional troops, two stances sharply at odds with the views of his base. Seen in this context, the Democratic Party’s lackadaisical approach to gay rights isn’t that remarkable.

All true and widely accepted. But then Kirchick goes off into a right-wing fantasy aimed at separating the gay constituency from the progressive movement and babbling about how much better off gays would be if they operated more like the NRA or AIPAC, which he terms "bipartisan lobbies," although he does acknowledge-- without mentioning widespread and implacable GOP homophobia as a primary wedge issue the party uses to define itself-- that gays may have a little teensy weensy bit of trouble achieving "the same sort of bipartisan consensus."

As we mentioned yesterday there is a better way to fight back against reactionary tendencies in the Democratic Party than empowering our mortal foes whose idea of solving the gay problem is somewhat akin to how their ideological antecedents in Germany in the 1930s attempted to solve the "gay problem." Teabaggers and Republicans are not the answer. And neither are Blue Dogs and other right-wing Democrats. Keeping in mind that every single Republican-- all 175 of them who were there to vote, including closet cases like Patrick McHenry (NC), Mark Kirk (IL), Dana Rohrabacher (CA), Tent Franks (AZ), Aaron Schock (IL), etc-- voted against the Hate Crimes bill and that the only 15 Democrats to vote no were all Blue Dogs, isn't it clear-- or at least logical-- that the real enemies of legitimate gay aspirations towards equality are not "Democrats," but conservatives-- both outside the party (i.e., Kirchick's friends the Republicans) and inside the party.

And that, of course, is why Blue America has embarked on a Better Democrats campaign for this cycle, starting with this ActBlue page, Send The Democrats A Message They Can Understand. Please take a look. We are targeting bad Democrats and trying to assist grassroots progressives who are opposing them. The Democrats who voted against the Matthew Shepard bill-- again, all Blue Dogs-- are serial homophobes who oppose gay fairness at every opportunity, just the way Republicans do. Blue America opposes and hopes to defeat each and every one of them-- Dan Boren (OK), Chris Carney PA), Travis Childers (MS), Lincoln Davis (TN), Joe Donnelly (IN), Brad Ellsworth (IN), Parker Griffith (AL, who has since left the Blue Dogs to officially join the Republican Party), Baron Hill (IN), Frank Kratovil (MD), Mike McIntyre (NC), Charlie Melancon (LA, a candidate for the U.S. Senate in a state with a lot of gay people), Walt Minnick (ID), Mike Ross (AR), Heath Shuler (NC), and Gene Taylor (MS)-- not with a worse or equally bad Republican but with a better Democrat. If you donate any money at all the the DCCC, most of it will go towards bolstering anti-gay Democrats in trouble with the Democratic base. Your money will go to make sure dedicated and relentless homophobes like Chris Carney, Frank Kratovil, Baron Hill, Walt Minnick, Joe Donnelly, Brad Ellsworth abd Travis Childers are re-elected so they can continue voting against gay families. And the DCCC has already started trying to destroy progressive candidates like Doug Tudor in favor of conservative shills like Lori Edwards in Florida. At the very least, we hope to eviscerate the power of their Blue Dog caucus and make it less able to work against the interests of gay people and other Americans who are not part of the corporatocracy conservatives seem to believe should get all the breaks. Again, if you'd like to help, this is a very good alternative to donating to the DNC, DCCC or DSCC: Blue America.

Jamie Kirchick Poops His Panties Because He Wants Attention

A few days ago I was out doing chores when I jumped back into my car and the NPR station came on. The first thing I heard was the host talking with my friend Jane Hamsher about the Senate Democrats actions in the Lieberman matter. I assume he was attracted by this post she had written earlier. It's always nice to hear Jane on the radio since there aren't a lot of voices in the public forum that speak so clearly and eloquently for the interests of working families and the great moral imperatives that make up "liberalism," from equality and human dignity to empathy and honesty. The guest who followed her sure had nothing to do with any of those imperatives. I didn't know who he was when he was introduced but it didn't take more than a few seconds before his stunted anger and contemptuous and nasty right-wing verbiage made me realize the host had decided to balance The Good with The Bad and that we were now being subjected to The Bad. But The Bad was so bad that the host almost immediately had to reprimand him for his vicious personal attack on Jane by saying that Jane wasn't on the air to defend herself from his scurrilous charges so why not just try to stick to his unique version of the facts?

I soon found out that The Bad is a pissant little NeoCon asslick named James Kirchick, one of those miserable malcontents striving to be accepted by the ruling class by savaging "his own kind." He'd be a classic Uncle Tom is he was African-American. Instead he's a very unhappy gay wingnut, a sad species indeed, forever obsessed with trying to justify his pitiful existence. Predictably, he works as a propagandist for one of the most pathetic and laughable pieces of the NeoCon smear machine, The New Republic. Today, however he's attempting to thrust himself into the spotlight again with what I now recognize as one of his gratuitously divisive hissy fits, this one directed not just against Jane-- apparently one of his obsessions-- but against progressive bloggers like David Sirota and Markos Moulitsos.

The 25 year old self-loather has been all over the map politically, from supporting Ralph Nader and attacking Pat Buchanan to claiming to be a libertarian while smearing Ron Paul as racist, anti-Semitic, homophobic and a militia conspiracist. This year he's a garden variety NeoCon kook. But when you look closely at his childish writing what you find is someone always kissing up to The Man, filled with righteous indignation towards "uppity" women and working people-- who he holds in the utmost contempt. He seems to be driven with anger and vitriol because progressive men don't want to date him.

Last Sunday Glenn Greenwald opened the wounds and Kirchick has been furiously and blindly striking out at all the perceived enemies of his little cocoon-like fantasy world.

It is Jamie Kirchick -- who spent the whole year embodying the most ludicrous extremes of neoconservatism, venerating John McCain and demonizing Barack Obama as a weak radical-- who, along with Kirchick's ideological comrade, Joe Lieberman, is the symbol for the "moderate majority of the American electorate."  Therefore, any opposition to the Kirchicks and Liebermans will doom the Democratic Party.

...There is and always has been a Beltway cottage industry of trite, platitude-spouting establishment-defenders whose only "argument" consists of issuing grave warnings that Democrats will suffer if they don't ignore and scorn "the Left" (defined as any Democrat dissimilar to Joe Lieberman).  They invariably purport to speak on behalf of unseen majorities and they are invariably painfully wrong, though with no effect on future behavior.  As but one example, writing last March in The Politico, Kirchick-- then speaking on behalf of "most general election voters"-- issued this dire warning about Obama's chances in the general election:

[Obama] wants us to think that in all of his heart-to-heart conversations with [Jeremiah Wright], he never saw the angry, conspiratorial and America-hating minister now topping the charts on YouTube. Many of Obama’s supporters-- given the messianic milieu of his campaign-- are credulous enough to believe these evasions. But most general election voters will not.

I guess they were-- and now Kirchick has moved on to represent all the mainstream center-right Obama voters who elected him president. His main point being that the netroots doesn't matter. In his hysterical Daily News screed he seems to have left out the word "pajamas" but otherwise tars bloggers with all the trite, ad hominem slurs people like him use day in and day out to discredit people they disagree with: "Enraged, Impotent, Band of angry bloggers, Fumed, Huffed and puffed, Seethed, Blogger rage, Petty, vindictive and small." Like Bush, he went to Yale.