Michael Barone has some good stuff up on his blog. Here's a gentle tweak at the very tweakable E.J. Dionne, who essentially wrote a column defending progressives against the charge that they do very well in places with very rich people. Barone has some substantive points, but let me cut to the nyah-nyah-nyah bit:
Dionne seems to be uncomfortable also with the idea that the Democrats depend heavily on elite rich voters who are out of touch with Middle America. He points out, accurately, that that's not the entire picture. But if he's not defensive about Democrats' rich elites, why bother to write the column?
I respond: because most of Dionne's columns come out of defensiveness. Heck, he writes entire books out of a sort of weird defensiveness. [Oh, how Dr. Potomac and I chuckled when after the 1994 Congressional elections, ol' E.J. came out with his book entitled They Only Look Dead: Why Progressives Will Dominate the Next Political Era. Obviously he had begun to write the book after the 1992 elections, only to have events catch up with him. Dr. Potomac, as I recall, suggested the subtitle "But, Actually, They're Deader". I thought about "Shoot'em Again to Make Sure They're Dead." Maybe E.J.'s writing a sequel: "They're Not Dead, Just Resting." Or, "They're Not Dead, They're Just in a Vegetative State." That's E.J. Dionne: The Black Knight of the American Punditocracy, with a writing schedule based on wish-fulfillment.]
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