If Only More Liberal Intellectuals Could Have Focused Our Attention On Al Gore’s Claims To Have Invented the Internet!

K-Drum spots something in Wilentz’s most recent monument to bad faith that I missed. I swear that this is verbatim, not a shorter:

Liberal intellectuals actually could have aided their candidate, while also doing their professional duty, by pressing him on his patently evasive accounts about various matters, such as his connections with the convicted wheeler-dealer Tony Rezko, or his more-than-informal ties to the unrepentant terrorist William Ayers…Instead, the intellectuals have failed Obama as well as their readers by branding such questioning as irrelevant, malicious or heretical.

Yes, if anything could have helped both Obama and the Democratic Party, it would have been to lend their imprimatur to wingnut guilt-by-association smear jobs! The logic is impeccable! Good of Wilentz to help the party out with his sincere advice like that.

By the way, can someone point to the article where Wilentz solemnly informed us about the immense benefits that would accrue to both Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party if only liberal intellectuals had focused more on, say, Todd Purdam’s vacuous insinuations about Bill Clinton’s sex life and business practices. Or think of how much it would have helped Clinton if liberal intellectuals had looked more carefully into Kathleen Willey’s accusations! Anyway, I’m sure Wilentz has pointed all of this out; it certainly couldn’t be the case that he developed his innovative theory that repeating Republican smears as widely as possible helps the Democrats purely to further his petty hatred of Barack Obama, could it?