It should be obvious to anyone who thinks about it for a second that Karl Rove, who dominated American politics for the last 8 years, is much smarter than Markos Moulitsas, who may have influenced a couple of local elections somewhere.
So when Newsweek hired Kos to "balance" Karl Rove, it was a really a gift to the Republicans, but more or less immune to criticism by Democrats, who hate the idea of hierarchies of any kind. We Democrats are always down on all fours together, and the highest form of human thought is our "collective wisdom," common sense, or whatever euphemism we can dream up for a hash of the latest buzz-words: Change, Hope, Mom, Apple Pie...
Democrats aren't just anti-intellectual, we are anti-intelligence, and there's a smoking gun to convict us of this charge in every election cycle.
If you look back through the blogs and mainstream media from 2007, there was no more respected Democratic intellectual than Paul Krugman, fighting the Bush agenda with one brilliant editorial after another in the New York Times, and no one disputed that he knew more about the economics of healthcare than anyone.
But when Krugman attacked Obama's no-mandate healthcare program as a sham that echoed the arguments of right-wing opponents of universal healthcare, and called Obama the "anti-change" candidate, he suddenly became a non-person for the Democratic Party.
If Mrs. Clinton gets the Democratic nomination, there is some chance — nobody knows how big — that we’ll get universal health care in the next administration. If Mr. Obama gets the nomination, it just won’t happen.
Shut up, Paul!
Heathcare may have been the top domestic issue during most of the Democratic campaign, but we don't care how many times you prove that Barack Obama is nothing but a shameless bullshitter! He looks good on TV! We understand the wonderfulness of his slogans: Hope, Change, Mom, Apple Pie...
So the Republicans get an evil genius at Newsweek, and we get a little monkey who may have influenced an election in New Jersey once upon a time. It's just business as usual for the Democratic Party, where every teenage Obamabot is at least as smart as Paul Krugman.
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