In the summer of 2005, an unknown Democrat named Paul Lewis Hackett III served notice that the Republicans’ run of power in Washington was in peril. A tall handsome trial lawyer and U.S. Marine Corps veteran who had served in Iraq, Hackett ran for Congress in Ohio’s second congressional district. The House seat in question was vacant, but it was also one of the state's safest GOP districts. Hackett made the race surprisingly close, losing by fewer than 4,000 votes in a district President Bush had carried by more than 91,000 votes just a year earlier.

Democrats took heart from this result, as they should have, for it proved a harbinger: They regained control of the House and the Senate in the midterm elections the following year. Hackett tried to parlay his near-success into a 2006 Senate run, but Democratic party leaders forced him out of the race when the candidate they had in mind, Sherrod Brown, raised ten times as much money as Hackett, and showed himself to be a more likely statewide candidate. Hackett did not help his cause with his occasional profane descriptions of the president, or by musing aloud that Republicanism had been hijacked by extremists “who aren’t a whole lot different than Osama bin Laden.” The Democratic elders’ judgment was vindicated: Sherrod Brown unseated incumbent Republican Senator Mike DeWine.

Hackett remains active in politics, however, and this is proving to be a mixed blessing. Unburdening himself on an influential website of the angry Democratic left, Hackett recently attempted to galvanize Democrats in Southern Ohio. His prescription for how Obama can win the state in November is to launch a series of savage attacks on Sarah Palin’s family. Here are his own words:

The message is simple and the professionals can refine it but essentially it should contain these elements: Sarah Palin? Can’t keep her solemn oath of devotion to her husband and had sex with his employee. Sarah Palin? Accidentally got pregnant at age 43 and the tax payers of Alaska have to pay for the care of her disabled child. Sarah Palin? Unable to teach her 16 year old daughter right from wrong and now another teenager is pregnant. Sarah Palin? Can you trust Sarah Palin and her values with America’s future? 

Where to start? Well, the rumors of an affair, offered by the National Enquirer without a shred of proof—or even evidence—are one (sleazy) thing. But arguing that it’s irresponsible to bring a Down’s Syndrome baby into the world is not “pro-choice,” it’s pro-eugenics. It’s a creepy and ugly, and… utterly illiberal sentiment—and written affirmation of the darkest suspicions harbored by conservatives about "progressives" regarding the issue of abortion. 

As for excoriating Palin for having a pregnant daughter, well, Bristol Palin is the same age Barack Obama’s mother was when she conceived him. Obama himself has been blunt and forceful about these questions: Leave Sarah Palin’s family out of it, he said. Yet, many of the bloggers, journalists, Democrats, and activists attacking Palin for all the wrong reasons aren’t listening to their own candidate. If they persist in this line of attack, they will surely get Obama beat. False charges, personal smears, weirdly mean-spirited attacks on babies and children…all of this has helped inoculate, not just Sarah Palin, but John McCain as well.

Responsible liberals are tearing their hair out. For one thing, they’d like to focus more attention on the McCain campaign’s own practice of making attack ads that contain exaggerated or dishonest characterizations of Obama’s record. The leftist blogosphere and tabloid press is drowning that criticism out.

Have you seen the widely emailed list of the books Sarah Palin banished from the library in her small Alaska town? Don't bother: It’s a fake.

How about her heartless decision as governor to cut Alaska's special education budget by 62 percent? CNN’s Soledad O’Brien repeated this on-air. Oops. Palin actually tripled the state’s spending on special needs kids. 

Did you hear that she belonged to the Alaska Independence Party, which favors secession from the union? The New York Times went with that. Wrong again. 

Perhaps suspecting me of misguided chivalry, a wise woman told me this very evening that Palin shouldn’t be spared the glare of the spotlight because she is a woman. It’s a point well-taken; and there are gaps in Palin's résumé that ought to give anyone, even loyal Republicans, pause. But Obama’s “friends” have done something remarkable: They’ve created such a din of boorish noise that they’ve induced an entire class of swing voters, particularly women, to simply tune out any criticism of her.