Are the editors on strike at the Washington Post?

Last year, when John and I published a piece in the Washington Post’s outlook secion, the Post’s editor (to her credit) hounded us for details, evidence, and explanations to support our arguments and assertions. Markos (Kos) Moulitsas must have had a different editor. His attack on the Clintons in today’s outlook section is full of howlers. But at least the Post came up with the right title (in the hardcopy edition) — “Problems on the LEFT.” For Kos’s piece again illustratres that that’s where the Democratic Party’s problems can be found.

In his second paragraph, Kos refers to “the jobless recovery” of the Bush years. That’s the jobless recovery that has produced roughly 200,000 new jobs per month for at least a year and a half, except during the immediate aftermath of Katrina. Then, Kos talks about the “unimaginable corruption” of the Bush administration (couldn’t an editor at least have helped him with the adjective?). That’s the corruption that, in six years, has seen one administration official (an adviser to the Vice President) indicted. That level of “corruption” may have been unimaginable under President Clinton, but not otherwise.

Kos then proceeds with his fairy tale history of the modern Democratic party. In that history, Democratic frontrunner Joe Lieberman lost his party’s nomination in 2004 due to a grassroots (I’m sorry, “netroots”) insurgency spearheaded by Howard Dean. Sure, Dean couldn’t get Democrats to vote for him in actual primaries, “but the point was made” (where is that blasted editor?)

In Kos’s history, Bill Clinton wrecked the Democratic party. Never mind that he’s the only Democrat since FDR to be elected president twice and the only Democrat since LBJ to be elected president once in other than a cliff-hanger election (Clinton did that twice, as well). What’s that compared to the fact that he “killed off the Jesse Jackson wing of the Democratic Party.”

All of this makes Hillary Clinton problematic to Kingmaker Kos. An unerring judge of horseflesh, he allows that Hillary “is one of the warmest politicians I have ever met.” But she’s only a rumor when it comes to the Daily Kos straw polls. Worse, she accepts the counsel of losers like James Carville and Mark Penn, who have no credibility because Bill Clinton never cleared 50 percent in his two three-candidate presidential elections. Better that Hillary should listen to Kos who foresaw that Howard Dean would sweep past Joe Lieberman in the 2004 Democratic also-ran sweepstakes.

Message to Hillary — please listen to Kos.

JOHN adds: Good ‘ol Markos. Whatever the RNC is paying him, it isn’t enough.

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