I’ve seen a number of critiques of the Beck-Palin phenomenon lately that attribute The Rise of the Silver Slurpers to a simple longing for leadership in these tumultuous times. There was this NYT op-ed over the weekend by Anna Holmes and Rebecca Traister, lefty feminists pining for “A Palin of Our Own.”

Since the 2008 election, progressive leaders have done little to address the obvious national appetite for female leadership. And despite (or because of) their continuing obsession with Ms. Palin, they have done nothing to stop an anti-choice, pro-abstinence, socialist-bashing Tea Party enthusiast from becoming the 21st century symbol of American women in politics.

The left’s failure to nurture and celebrate female politicians has had a significant effect on its policies. In recent years, Democratic majorities and progressive legislation seem to have been built on steady trade-offs of reproductive rights, culminating this year when the first female speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, was forced to push through health care reform with a compromise on abortion financing.

An older generation of female Democrats, including Mrs. Clinton and Ms. Pelosi, are about as eager to mount a Palin-style girl-powered campaign as they are to wear a miniskirt on the House floor. For them, proudly or aggressively touting one’s feminist credentials (if you’re actually a feminist, that is) is taboo. It’s considered too, well, female.

I call bullshit on this. First of all, let’s look at the examples they cited:  Clinton, Pelosi and Palin. Hillary Clinton is arguably the most powerful woman on the planet, busily running the foreign policy apparatus of the world’s only super power. Nancy Pelosi is the only female Speaker of the House—ever—and a highly effective legislator in that role by any objective measure. And Sarah Palin is…an occasional Fox News contributor, a former second-fiddle on a losing presidential ticket and a half-term governor who quit every important job she ever held.

Sorry, ladies, but I’ll match our record up with the GOP’s on women’s leadership any day of the week. Sure, Palin has a creepily devoted fan base and scads of Facebook friends. So does Lady Gaga. And Lady Gaga has more progressive policy chops.

As for the lack of a “Palin-style girl-powered campaign,” I don’t see the reluctance on the part of the Dems to present a second such abomination to the planet as a sign that Democrats are ashamed to tout their feminist credentials or celebrate the historic nature of pioneering women in top spots. I’m not satisfied with the representation of women in leadership positions either, but let’s not forget that the halting progress that’s being made is being made by the Dems.

Let’s recall, after all, that it was in the Democratic Party that a woman duked it out with a man in a very closely run campaign for the top spot. Palin was John McCain’s sole executive decision and gimmick, and she skipped out on the heavy lifting that Hillary Clinton handled. She hasn’t paid the dues to be put into the same category as Clinton.

Holmes and Traister longingly imagine a female progressive taking to Facebook and Twitter to rip opponents Palin-style. But here’s the thing—unlike Palin, Democratic leaders like Clinton and Pelosi have actual jobs and political accountability. There is no shortage of female progressives without political jobs who rip opponents more effectively (and coherently) than Palin: Hell, Holmes and Traister themselves do.

But, according to Holmes and Traister, there’s this lack of leadership. And it’s the Democrats’ fault because they didn’t rush out to identify a progressive Palin clone. 

In a similar vein, Joe Scarborough voices discontent with the quality of leadership on the non-insane-wingnut side when discussing this weekend’s Beck-Palin dog-and-moose show thingie. Scarborough lays it at Obama’s feet, blaming the president for creating a leadership vacuum that allows demagogues to take center stage.

Take a look at this remarkable exchange between Howard Dean and Scarborough yesterday. The interesting part starts at about 6:00 (do yourself a favor and skip the puke-inducing Lil’ Luke fluffery at the beginning):

To recap, Dean compares Beck to Father Coughlin, a right-wing hate-monger and fascist with a peak audience of 40 million Americans during the Great Depression. (Too bad Pat Buchanan wasn’t on hand to give a first-person account of Beck’s precursor—Buchanan’s father was neck-deep in the Coughlin movement.) 

Scarborough blames Obama for the Beckocalypse, arguing that people are glomming onto Beck because Obama hasn’t been a strong enough leader and people are “hungry for leadership.” Scarborough asserts that Beck’s following contains a significant number of disgruntled Obama supporters.

Dean doubts that very much, and, well, duh. But Scarborough, who is convinced that “anecdote” is a synonym for “data,” relates a vague tale of some “evangelical preacher” he knows who voted for Obama (even though he disagreed with Obama’s policies!) and who might have attended the Beck rally “if he could get away.” In Scarborough’s tiny pea brain, this is called “proof.”

Then Scarborough makes a claim I’d never heard before—that following Robert F. Kennedy’s assassination, many of RFK’s supporters transferred their allegiance to George Wallace. Huh?

I would never describe myself as optimistic about human nature nor believe I could underestimate the deep stupidity of the human race. But I think Scarborough is full of crap, both on the Kennedy-to-Wallace and Obama-to-Beck transference. 

I’m not saying it never, ever happens: There are weak-minded fools in any large group—people who identify unhealthily with a candidate, a religious figure, a celebrity, etc., due to some deficiency in their own character and willingly surrender their free will and capacity for rational thought. And because these people are there for the wrong reasons in the first place, they may very well act in irrational ways if disappointed.

Therefore, it’s entirely possible that a handful of people transferred their allegiance from a social justice liberal (RFK) to an avid bigot (Wallace). There may even have been a disgruntled Obama supporter—even two!—at Beck’s “Be a Sunbeam for Mormon Jeebus” Show.

But Scarborough and the media at large tend to overemphasize the significance of that sort of phenomenon. Just as Holmes and Traister (and others) overestimate the significance of Palin to women’s progress.

I’m sure none of us around these parts will ever forget the gigantic belly-flop of the over-hyped PUMA movement, which not only did not deliver the 2008 election to McCain-Palin but failed to even statistically dent Obama’s showing among female voters in the general election as compared to the performance of past Democratic candidates.

The PUMAs were a fart in a whirlwind. To the extent they exist, the Obama voters who’ve embraced Beck and Palin’s far-right vision are farts in the whirlwind too. Holmes, Traister and Scarborough are drawing false conclusions because they’re analyzing America by fart.

That’s not to say Beck, Palin and the rest of the wingnut fringe pose no threat: Of course they do. Demagogues always have, particularly during times of social and economic dislocation.

But aping their tactics isn’t the way to counter them: We don’t need a progressive Fembot who shoots Facebook bullets from her boobs. And we don’t need a lefty snake-oil salesman to identify divine providence in the flight patterns of Canadian geese.

What do we need? You tell me.