Unlike me, I bet you don't read the left wing blogs. I don't blame you - I sort of get paid to read them. But even before I hopped aboard the Weekly Standard gravy train, I read the lefty blogs. I liked to know what my ideological (and temperamental) opposites were thinking, even if I did find them often offensive or idiotic. I should offer, in the spirit of fairness, that I sometimes enjoy some of the left wing blogs and find them fun to read even though horribly misguided. But I come not to praise the Netroots, but to bury them. The tone in the progressive blogosphere has scraped all time lows over the past few weeks, and that's no mean feat.
The only reason this topic is worth discussing is because of what it tells us about the presidential race. Until Sarah Palin joined the Republican ticket, there was a confident conviction in liberal Blogistan that Barack Obama would easily win the election. I'll put it this way - the lefties were as bullish on Obama's chances as we righties were pessimistic about McCain's. When McCain supporters would discuss the possibilities of him winning pre-Palin, the conversation would usually center around some far-fetched scenario that would wrest victory from the jaws of defeat.
Of course, everything has changed and now the race is a genuine toss-up. And how has the left reacted to this development? With characteristic dignity and understatement. First, they smeared Sarah Palin with a host of - um - imaginative charges like she wore a fat suit to fake a pregnancy that had actually visited itself upon her daughter. Even the chief disseminator of that rumor from his perch at the Atlantic has since bethought himself of that smear, publicly crediting Palin for bringing her fifth child to term on Wednesday (although of course neither admitting error nor apologizing for his role in spreading the rumor).
The left has since regrouped from that ignominious beginning. Even the Daily Kos quickly scrubbed itself of all remnants of Trig Trutherism within 72 hours of the original blunder. So where has the left gone? To its most hospitable home turf - loathing its political opponents with an unnerving passion.
When this campaign began, I wondered how the left would manage to work itself into a frothing-at-the-collective-mouth hatred for John McCain. After all, McCain had done more to annoy conservatives over the previous eight years than liberals. Sure enough, when McCain appeared destined to go down to easy defeat to the Democrats' chosen one, the left treated him with relative kindness. ("Relative kindness" is of course a term of art when discussing a group that most commonly compares George W. Bush to a chimp or Hitler.)
But when McCain showed the audacity to actually make it a race, the left bristled. Time Magazine's Joe Klein began getting scandalized on an almost daily basis. Thoughts about who drew what in the dirt outside the Hanoi Hilton began preoccupying the most lofty lefty blogging minds. When McCain made a dead heat of it, the Obama campaign and its blogging supporters "took the gloves off." The words you have most often heard describing McCain in the left wing blogosphere over the past week or so are "evil" and "despicable." And that was before the Obama campaign announced yet again today that it is once more peeling off its stylish Isotoners. One can only wonder what level of mindless vituperation awaits.
That's to say nothing of the hatred the left has instantly formed for Sarah Palin. I sometimes wonder what things would have been like if McCain had selected Tim Pawlenty as his running mate. With all due respect to Governor Pawlenty who is by all accounts a capable and dedicated public servant, he seems like one of the more boring men in America. It would have been amusing to see what arguments the left would have used to convince itself that Pawlenty is actually evil incarnate. Then again, if Pawlenty had been the nominee and the Republican ticket had continued to flounder, there would have been no need for such hysterics.
You might wonder what the left is currently thinking about Barack Obama these days. After all, it's a Democratic year and by all rights he should be cruising to victory. Of course, he isn't. So has the left turned on him? Not yet. Instead, they've assigned Obama the most hackneyed role that a Democratic politician can play. As of this writing, the left wing fears Barack Obama is perhaps too noble a creature to prevail in something as ugly as American politics. If Obama loses, they will furiously blame America for his defeat, not his blundering and message-less campaign.
Of course, all this anger bespeaks a hideous desperation. After all, when you're winning, you tend not to be angry.
