Yeah, there is a right way and a wrong way to talk about Obama. The right way is "Holy, holy,holy! Obama Almighty!" Any other way is the wrong way.

Guess the bloom is finally off the rose with Nader among Obama's "progressive" base. They didn't mind when he gave Bush the White House for 8 years but now that he's attacking Obama he's quit preaching and gone to meddling. What did you expect from him? He's a complete egomaniac - just like Obama. And, I'm sorry, but he nailed it with his diatribe about Obama's playing on White guilt in his upscale base. They love it. They eat it up. The reverend Fleger is what they would all like to be, as long as they could keep their trust funds and townhouses. And they have always been able to afford their guilt, since poor whites got to pay for it. They don't live in crumbling neighborhoods that once were cohesive, pleasant working class strongholds. Their kids don't have to go to public schools. They can sigh over the racial sins of others with perfect impunity, just as they sigh over Tibet and Darfur and the Holocaust and anything else under the sun which isn't their problem. Wonder why Obama has bombed with working class whites? Ask his precious base.

Amazing that this species is still around. You'd have thought the Republicans would have hunted them to extinction in their native habitat, south of the Mason-Dixon. If the GOP couldn't do it, I don't imagine that the Left will. In Reagan's day they were called "boll weevils". Now they are blue dogs. They represent that part of the South that still harkens to the Democratic trumpet, minus the jarring notes of Yankee extremism. Anyway, Greenwald's proposed purge presupposes two things: first that the left can convince the voters of these moderately conservative districts to vote against the dawgs. And secondly, that there will be a Democratic sweep in November which will increase the Democratic congressionial majorities and give Obama the White House. The Dems will almost certainly hang on to Congress, but Obama's high-falutin' airs are beginning to wear thin with the public and the more they look at him, the less they see. His election is not a sure thing.

Sorry, kids, but your hero brought this on himself. Race has always been at the core of his campaign. He just expected that the subject would only be used to his advantage. He was able to have it that way in the primaries, even to the extent of smearing the Clintons as racists, but it won't work this time around. And the more Salon and HuffPo and the NYT boo-hoo about it, the better it is for McCain.

Unlike the Left, most Americans aren't interested in voting for a candidate who will expiate their racial guilt - because they don't feel any guilt. And they don't appreciate being told that they should. Nor do they select a president based on how popular he is abroad. Obama may yet be elected but he will have to win as an real live person, not as constructed narrative.

Doesn't matter whether it's Bill or Hillary, McCain or GWB. Anyone, apparently, who doesn't make life easy for Obama is a "divider". Bush has been a perfectly awful president in many ways but why on earth should he not fight for free trade, long a pillar of GOP policy, even as he exits the White House? The duty of the opposition is to constructively and loyally oppose - not worship - the president of the party in power. Or is the plan now to make us an absolute monarchy?

Thanks, Mr. Lind for this sane article. The left has always displayed a disturbing fondness for euphemism, which our adversaries have lampooned with merciless accuracy. It's fine to be "liberal" in the FDR-LBJ sense of the word. Over the past few years, if you've noticed, the right has employed that word rather lovingly themselves, albeit in a 19th Century sense.

And thanks for the kind words about Clinton and the New Democrats - words which "progressives" have always been miserly with. For all his sexual melodrama Clinton will be judged a successful president. When he came into office the Democrats had been hopelessly stereotyped as weak on crime, weak on defense and weak on the economy. When he left they had credibility in all three areas. Those are three pretty big dragons to slay. And if Obama does prove to be a "transformational" uber-leader, as we are assured he must, he can thank St. Bill the Baptist for clearing the way.

Well if it wasn't the American Century, whose century was it? The Hohenzollern Century? The Nazi Century? The Imperial Japanese Century? The Soviet Century? All Bacevich can really assert is that his country isn't perfect - as all previous hegemons have presumably been. Poor guy! I guess he feels he deserves a country as good as himself. Maybe one of the alternate realities listed above would suit him better. I'd vote to send him to the less malignant Nazi Century where his enlightened notions on proper world leadership would surely receive the respect they deserve.

Too bad he can no longer look forward to the Sharia Century. It would be fun to see how swiftly he took turban.