I … don’t really know who to root for in this fight. I suspect that neither do most of you, either. All I know is that I really, really want to pass a lot of popcorn after watching Tulsi Gabbard’s latest fundraising video, even if I don’t want to open my wallet. Gabbard attacks Hillary Clinton as part of the “corrupt elite,” and claims that Hillary’s smear of her as a Russian asset is payback for Gabbard’s endorsement of Bernie Sanders in 2016.

Put some extra butter flavoring on that popcorn, will ya?

Hillary & her gang of rich, powerful elite are going after me to send a msg to YOU: “Shut up, toe the line, or be destroyed.” But we, the people, will NOT be silenced. Join me in taking our Democratic Party back & leading a govt of, by & for the people! https://t.co/TOcAOPrxye pic.twitter.com/TahfE2XOek

— Tulsi Gabbard 🌺 (@TulsiGabbard) October 20, 2019

Gabbard had been relegated to the sidelines after derailing Kamala Harris in the second debate at the end of July. She barely qualified for last week’s debate but didn’t get a memorable moment out of it. Until Hillary Clinton offered up her lunatic Russians-Russians-Everywhere conspiracy theory about Gabbard being a Russian asset, few people gave her a second thought.

Suddenly, though, Gabbard is hot news, and she’s striking while the iron is hot. On Friday, Gabbard called her “cowardly” and dared her to enter the Democratic primary to keep her mouth shut. Oh, and it was Barzini all along, because Tattaglia was a pimp, or something:

Great! Thank you @HillaryClinton. You, the queen of warmongers, embodiment of corruption, and personification of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party for so long, have finally come out from behind the curtain. From the day I announced my candidacy, there has been a …

— Tulsi Gabbard 🌺 (@TulsiGabbard) October 18, 2019

… powerful allies in the corporate media and war machine, afraid of the threat I pose.

It’s now clear that this primary is between you and me. Don’t cowardly hide behind your proxies. Join the race directly.

— Tulsi Gabbard 🌺 (@TulsiGabbard) October 18, 2019

In her email on Saturday, Gabbard accused Clinton of being behind “a campaign to destroy my reputation” while reiterating her comments from the previous day calling the former secretary of State “the queen of warmongers, embodiment of corruption and personification of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party for so long.”

“We must not let Hillary Clinton and her establishment allies silence the voice of the American people and quash all those who dare to offer a dissenting voice in response to our corrupt status quo,” Gabbard said in the email.

Tune in to the next exciting episode, when Gabbard wakes up to find a horse’s head in her bed! Or the other end of a horse, which might reflect Hillary a little more accurately after her “Russian asset” rant.

None of this is to argue that Gabbard’s a voice of reason in the radical-progressive chorus we see in the Democratic primaries. Her embrace of Bashar al-Assad was shameful and grotesque, for instance, and for the most part Gabbard’s part of that same chorus anyway. Even her pushback against Hillary is from the left; Gabbard didn’t endorse Bernie Sanders for nothing, after all. That doesn’t make her wrong about the Clintons and their “corrupt elite” political machine, nor of Hillary’s cheap-shot tactics from the cheap seats. But if Hillary wants to keep characterizing Democrats in the 2020 field as hopelessly bought by the Russians, well, who are we to stop her?

All this does is make me hungry … for even more popcorn. Keep it coming!