It's been awhile since the Angry White Liberal was spotted in the wild. He's been in hiding since 2006, when the electorate started handing victory after victory to the Democratic party. For a while there, whenever a liberal surveyed the political scene, it looked as though the country had finally come to its senses. Americans no longer deigned to elect conservatives to high office. In 2008 voters fell for the dulcet tones of a young, charismatic liberal senator from Illinois. A "new progressive era" was about to begin. James Carville's latest book, published earlier this year, promised to explain "how the Democrats will rule the next generation."

Then something bizarre began to happen. As Barack Obama's presidency unfurled, his approval ratings fell. The public showed skepticism at his major initiatives.

Times columnist Frank Rich warned that the current debates surrounding health care resemble the "walk up to the Kennedy assassination."

The King of the Angry White Liberals, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, wrote on August 14 that Grassley is "flat-out despicable." Resistance to the Democrats' plans, Krugman continued, amounts to an "outpouring of hate," the result of "the paranoia of a significant minority of Americans and the cynical willingness of leading Republicans to cater to that paranoia." (For the record, more Americans disapprove than approve of Obamacare.)

Charges of racism are never far from the Angry White Liberal's lips. In a July 22, 2009, Huffington Post entry--the website is a sort of pressure cooker for liberal rage--the "award winning columnist, author and Chicago radio talk show host" Ray Hanania wrote that:

Although the Republicans and their so-called "Blue Dog" conservative Democrats claimed they oppose President Obama's health care plan because it would increase the nation's debt, the real reason is driven by racism and the fact that the majority who would benefit from health care reform are minorities, the poor and families burdened by uninsured health challenges.

On the Diane Rehm Show in August, Newsweek's Eleanor Clift speculated that opposition to Obamacare was an expression of the "racism" that was "latent" in the 2008 campaign. Bewildered by a few cases in which a voter had safely, legally, and constitutionally brought a firearm to an anti-Obama care rally, Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne noted that "guns were used on election days in the Deep South during and after Reconstruction to intimidate black voters and take control of state governments." Guns also were used in the invasion of Normandy. What's Dionne's point, except to imply that the gun-carriers (and, by extension, adversaries of Obamacare) are just like Bull Connor?

All this vituperation, this unrelenting urge to discredit opposing views, builds and builds. It's uncontainable. Inconsolable. First the Angry White Liberal blames conservatives, then Democrats, then Obama . . . before you know it, he'll be blaming the entire country for the failure to pass "comprehensive health care reform." Everyone, that is, but himself.