"Argument 1 is simply wrong. Small states have electoral votes too -- more electoral votes per capita, in fact, than large states. A good many large states are not in play in any reasonable election: The Democrat will win New York and California, and the Republican will win Texas and Georgia, unless it is an absolute blowout landslide."

Wilentz, a, talked about the popular vote, not the electoral vote. Hillary won Texas, and the bizarre and Byzantine caucus rules took it away from her, for instance. And yes, Texas is a goner for Democrats -- but so is the Deep South, where Barack racked up so many caucus victories. And on balance, the small caucus states won't go our way, despite being able to get a large flash mob to a caucus in a Red state.

I can scarcely think of a single "progressive" policy that he puts forward that Hillary doesn't do better. He's got a winning personality, but so what? People thought that Bush was the personality kid, after a year and a half of unsparing ridicule about Al Gore, who was feminized to be ridiculed. Remember, he was the guy who was a pathological liar, so unsure of his gender that he had to hire Naomi Wolf to tell him how to dress, haw haw! The way the Dems have been destroyed in election after election is by feminizing them. Dukakis won't stand up for his wife by executing her killer! And he looks, you know, gay in that tank hat. Now, they got a real woman! Don't have to go to all that trouble to feminize her.

Now, in the Democratic field, there were four or five candidates more progressive than Hillary or Obama. I think the boys got a crush on Obama. No, really. They're investing him with all the progressiveness they can project on him, while he makes footsie with Bloomberg and all those Blue Dogs, and weasels big time on health care. Oh, and I'll vote for him.

Oh, and Edwards? He got purty hair. See? It's not just Hillary.

There are wide swaths of progressive America where your moral worth is judged by how much you can insult Hillary.

Oh, yes, they animate the nonsense that passes for politics, and political dialogue in this country. But don't ever forget the "liberal" media for their part. The new Tonya Harding media that came of age just in time for OJ is a deepy diseased and troubled world. There's nothing that animates their tiny brains more than stupidity. One offhand remark is pimped and cossetted, until the ghastly phrase "Bittergate" is spoken as though it makes sense. Helpful boys on the bus listen to entire speeches, watch entire events, and plot the way they can bait Bill to say something that, if not controversial, then apparently controversial. And, I'll say it again, the Obama campaign has been a depressingly negative thing. It's borne fruit, of course, in that Hillary now has very high negatives. It's almost as though Rove has been consulting, but he needn't, with Axelrod and the others in the game. The Huffington Post has a whole staff of "political reporters" who are oppo researchers, not reporters. They've been unmerciful on Hillary. Hillary, on the other hand, has been rather restrained until quite recently. (I hear bitter exclamations of disbelief, but revisit this in five years, and you'll see.) With her reluctance to silence Ferraro and the "Bitterness" comments, she's gone over the edge too.

In case anybody's surprised by the ABC debate, read your Somerby. The mainstream press has been a bunch of meddling, useless fools for a long time now. It doesn't matter that they're boycotting FOX. Fox has come to us all.