Why liberals persist in pointing out that right-wing attacks are incorrect after the slurs have already been slurred is one of the fundamental questions of early 21st c. political campaigning.

William Saletan, who is usually spot on, exemplifies this trend with a meticulously well-researched, perfectly near to pointless piece in Slate today. We have got to get it into our heads that the accuracy of a charge is nowhere near as important as the longevity, vitriol, and target of it.

We've got incumbents with seats just as safe as those of Tom Delay, Tom Feeney, or Tom Tancredo; what the Barney Frank's, Kenneth Meek's, and Jan Schakowsky's of the Democracy need to do is get a little crazy now and again. If we had prominent Dems rolling around calling out the corruptions petty and grand they see all around them, pushing rumors like the Perry affair as hard as they could, relishing discussion of the planeload of Saudis spirited out of the country in the week after 9/11 and the Bush family's storied Nazi connections, then we would have something.