We will simply sit down in our parlors with the Catholic bishops and Operation Rescue and various anti-choice terrorists and assassins and sip herbal tea and burn soy candles and gently explain to them why women are real-life human beings and that it is just not nice to put their lives in danger and violate their bodies.

ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME??????? I can't justify this over-the-top statement? I'll ignore the part about it being "over-the-top" because all that means is that you don't personally agree with it. Of course anti-choicers hate women. Only hatred is compatible with the kind of disrespect and sadism inherent in any attempt to put another human being's control over their own body under legal and economic restrictions. You cannot love and respect women and at the same time believe that they should be forced to continue an unwanted pregnancy.

Have you ever seen the rhetoric these maniacs use? The terror and loathing drips from every word. They see women as at best children, at worst evil and in need of domination. You cannot reason with these people, because they're crazy. It may surprise you to learn that many people do not arrive at their beliefs by careful reasoning based on the facts. Therefore, they cannot be reasoned with. They can only be opposed. Trying to reason with them is giving up.

As for "hate-driven rage," what emotion other than hatred is an appropriate reaction to these disgusting misogynists? If you don't hate them, if they don't make you angry, what the hell is wrong with you?

If you want to win this fight, you have to defeat the other side. Not be nice to them, not cooperate with them, not reason with them. The goal is to win.

But the comments that are there include every paranoid, counterfactual, racist, stupid, ignorant, completely insane wackjob talking point and fantasy.

2) Women are humans. Fetuses and blastocysts are not humans. They are part of a woman's body. If you believed that women were humans, you would not be capable of taking the position that women should be forced to give birth.

Get your brain replaced.

What laws did John Edwards break? None. What lies did he tell you about his platform or his plans? None. That is how John Edwards has been reckless.

Of course this is all about sex. You are sure that Spitzer's or Edwards's sexual behavior tells you something about how they behave in public life, but there is no evidence that it does. What actual crimes were they accused of? In what scandals were they involved while in office, what charges of corruption? None. There's just the sex. You are offended because they did something sexual that you, personally, find offensive.

Puritans always pretend that they are focused on something besides the sex, but they never are. If Spitzer or Edwards had done some equally embarrassing thing that was not sexual -- that is, something irrelevant to their performance in office that you might be grossed out by -- they would not have had to leave the public eye in disgrace. Their enemies would have attacked them, many of their allies would have closed ranks, and they would not have been the subjects of ridicule as they have been. I'd say the odds are even as to whether they would have had to change their plans at all. But let a man do something sexual, and here you come.

My label of puritan is not a strawman because it's accurate. It's because of your way of thinking that we do not have politicians like Edwards, Spitzer, and Hart reaching their potential as political leaders. Americans have to grow up and learn that politicians are not heroes, they are not role models, they are not inspirational, they are just people who have chosen a particular career and want you to hire them. Unless you think it's appropriate to inquire into the consenting adult sexual behavior of your plumber or doctor, in which case you have really serious problems, then you need to get over the idea that hiring a politician is different than hiring anyone else. It does not matter if they are good or nice people. All that matters is that they support and implement the correct policies.

Mind your own business.

Supporting a candidate means you support their platform, not their sexual fidelity or their performance as a spouse. I don't care if John Edwards (or Barack Obama, or Mitt Romney, or Mike Huckabee) is the best or worst husband on Earth, or if they're rotten parents, or if they cheat at cards. I am only interested in what they do or will do in office. People are complicated; how they act in one area of their lives is not a reliable guide to how they will act in any other.

If you were not a puritan, you would not care at all what any politician does in their private life, period. Americans in general feel they have a right to an opinion about other people's sex lives. Progressives need to realize that any attempt to police the sexual lives of others is essentially conservative. Think of all the harm that has been done to this country because progressive Dems failed to fight for Dem politicians' right to sexual privacy. Gary Hart, Eliot Spitzer, John Edwards -- all ruined, in part, because American progressives refused to give up that precious American right of pretending they are pure.

Edwards had the best platform and would have been the best president. If he has a problem in his marriage, that is between him and his wife. It has nothing to do with how he would govern. No one has a right to know anything about a candidate's personal life, and no one has a right to expect any particular kind of behavior from a candidate when they are not at work.

It's none of my boss's business what I do in my personal life, and it's none of your business what John Edwards does in his. If snooping around in the personal lives of politicians is important to you, and you have a need to judge a candidate based on your evaluation of their sexual behavior, join the Republicans.

I realize that democracy and basic human decency can be difficult and complicated, but it's really better for everybody if we find ways to work within their boundaries instead of looking for ways to treat other human beings like trash. One reason that there is so much violence in American prisons is that as a people we don't actually care what happens to the people inside them.

First we stop putting so many people in prison unnecessarily, then we improve the lives of the people who are incarcerated, and then we can discuss whether state-sanctioned murder is justified by the belief that we can have freedom and justice without solving difficult problems and making difficult decisions.

Why don't we let the candidate who can run the most effective campaign in the scenario most similar to the general election campaign have the best chance at the nomination?

Why don't we give people in urban areas, which make up a majority of the population, a fair shot at influencing the nomination?

Why should a voter in New York matter less than a voter in Iowa?

On the other hand, if we could drive all the fakes and idiots and collaborators out of the Democratic party, progressives could be effective as the Democratic party.