While debate continues to rage on these pages about the anonymous mailers that may have skewed the City Council election, can we agree on one point:

If the permanently discontented, courage-challenged progressives who crafted the after-dark mailers had signed their names, the temperature of the ongoing disagreements would be considerably cooler.

Why didn’t they reveal their identities?

Therein lies an explanation for the main reasi these persons occupy the radical wing of the progressive movement.

Why couldn’t these cowards tout the shining talents of Meghan Sahli-Wells, Thomas Small and Daniel Lee instead of crouching like animals in the shadows, masking their faces, and insulting Goran Eriksson and Scott Wyant. How manly and ladylike.

There is so much that is positive about the candidates for their side, but that is off-putting for these overaged rads. Like alcoholics and druggies, negativism is what drives them, what rousts them out of bed every morning.

If these predators knew their mothers growing up, they probably were taught to behave morally rather than immorally.

They chose the dirtier path because it supplied them with cheap thrills – and the attention they are benefitting from now.

Why did they not just drift off course but leap off the rails of acceptable behavior?

Why are they ferociously mad every day? Is there never an off-day?

You can instantly recognize these male and female (and perhaps transgendered) societal misfits.

Lacking both an adequate vocabulary and a disciplined mind to fairly contest those of opposing views, their initial impulse is to respond emotionally rather than cerebrally.

With maniacal monotony, they repeat a learned chant, the most acerbic accusation that can be unleashed in contemporary society:

You are a racist.

That is consistently their first choice as a weapon of destruction.

The first Obama presidential campaign taught them well. They have long memories if not good ones.