A few weeks ago, I wrote a post saying Cindy Sheehan would probably not do very well against Nancy Pelosi, and therefore I was sorry she had decided to run. I said she was more valuable to the antiwar movement as an activist. I said leftists waste a lot of time on futile electoral contests, and cited examples of such contests. These remarks, which were couched in terms of deepest respect for Cindy Sheehan, have evoked much bile and wrath in this blog’s comment section and elsewhere in the blogosphere. So much fun are commenters having discussing what a traitor and reactionary I am, few seem to have noticed that, in a followup, I wrote that my comments were actually as much about electoral protest politics in general as about this particular race and “if Cindy Sheehan wants to make an anti-war gesture, running against Nancy Pelosi is one way to do it, so good luck to her.”

She’s going to need it. Her outraged and self-righteous response to my mild and polite posts make me wonder how she will withstand the rigors of political campaigning. Because I express doubt that she will make much impression on the ballot box, and think that likelihood and its implications are worth discussing frankly, Sheehan accuses me of “stridently” (nice –does anyone EVER use that word for a man?) defending the Democratic Party’s “complicity” in the war and of not caring about the sufferings of Iraqis the way she does.

I’m sorry, that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me. Even if I was the reprehensible character she claims — yellowdog Dem indifferent to the horrors of war, willing to say anything to keep Nancy Pelosi in power — I could still be right about Sheehan’s own electoral prospects and about whether such runs are the best use of the antiwar/progressive movements energies. Shouldn’t a serious candidate be trying to show the hundreds of thousands of people who visit this website that I am wrong? Sheehan doesn’t address any of the points I raise, or that Gary Younge raises in his excellent column on the same issues. All she does is malign my motives and my personality, attack The Nation for supposedly exploiting her fame, and accuse anyone who questions her judgment of supporting the war.

If a lot of people who cheered you last year think you’re making a mistake this year, there may be something to it. I’m just saying.