Fair to call him a “top” supporter? Given the fact that he’s a member of The One’s national finance committee and advertises that fact in his HuffPo bio, I’m going with “yes.” His M.O. reminds me of Greenwald trying to rewrite the definition of “chickenhawk” so that it applies to the right but not the left: Start with the smear you want to use, then refine the parameters just enough to protect your own side from the tu quoque. In this case it means replacing the argument that mom should be home with the family with the more highly nuanced argument that any politician of either sex should be home when their family’s in crisis. Bristol’s pregnant and baby Trig has Down’s syndrome and, gosh, don’t you think a responsible mother gender-neutral parent would consider that before doing something as rash as running for high office? To which I reply: Am I hallucinating or isn’t there a guy on the other ticket who had a much worse family crisis than this, who in fact has been praised to the heavens for not quitting his job and instead making a heroic effort to manage both kids and career through hard times? Did I dream that? I could have sworn I heard something about it recently.

All part of the effort to freak-ify her, of course. She’s a bad mom with a chillbilly family better suited to Springer than to network election coverage. That’s why the AP’s including cute little details about school mascots in their stories of how many colleges she attended. And why “respectable” journals of left-wing thought are soliciting pieces from advice columnists. Exit question: Does the left really want to play a game of “children ruined by absentee political parents”? Because I know just the place to start.

Update: Don’t you mind what those conservatives are saying about the press, now. The coverage is fair because, well, we say it is:

After several primetime speakers at this week’s Republican National Convention unleashed a barrage of attacks on the news media for their coverage of vice-presidential nominee Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, network news executives defended their coverage and dismissed the charges as a stale political strategy meant to distract viewers from legitimate election issues.

“It’s a time-honored marketing ploy and, every time they bash the media, it means they’re not talking about a vision or a plan,” CNN president Jon Klein said. “But the best antidote to cynical marketing is solid reporting.”…

“America has been presented with a total unknown who might be a heartbeat away from the presidency,” Klein said of Palin, “and Americans have every right to expect as much information as possible about this person so that they can make an informed choice. Certainly our critics are in favor of Americans making an informed choice, aren’t they?”

What Klein means by “informed choice,” of course, is having his reporters recycle Daily Kos rumors about whether Trig is really Palin’s child and wonder aloud whether the mother of a Down’s baby should really be doing something as selfish as running for vice president.

These morons understand that the public agrees with McCain’s campaign about this, yes?