It’s not just rightie pundits who fall into the stupid pit. Sometimes I wonder where people keep their heads.

Barry Friedman and Dahlia Lithwick wonder what progressives will possibly do with themselves now that we appear to be cruising to victory on marriage equality.

But did you notice that, on the way to this victory, the left, as a movement, seemed to abandon almost everything else for which it once stood? That while gay marriage rose like cream to the top of the liberal agenda, the rest of what the left once cherished was shoved aside, ignored, or “it’s complicated” to oblivion? …

… Progressives were once unapologetically pro-choice, committed to the idea that women would control their own bodies and destiny, and that the government should stay out of it. They insisted that women and their physicians should make intimate health care decisions without the genial assistance of state and federal legislators and their transvaginal probes. Then along came so-called partial-birth abortion and pictures of late-term fetuses, and all of a sudden the storyline shifted to killing babies, as if killing babies was what anyone ever wanted to do. Still, progressives, pushing their own babies in their Bugaboos, came to doubt their convictions on abortion, and abortion doctors, and even on Planned Parenthood clinics, which are often the focus of angry demonstrations.

Now, mind you, this was posted on Slate yesterday. This was posted less than a week after Wendy Davis and her pink sneakers had become our fair-haired (literally) darling.

Similarly, Friedman and Lithwick complain that progressives have abandoned the causes of labor, income inequality, gun control (that was true until Sandy Hook), supporting public schools and keeping prayer out of them, and opposing the death penalty. I repeat, they are not saying that liberals have been less successful at making progress on these lines; they are saying progressives aren’t even interested in those causes any more.

Maybe we should send them a recording of last year’s Democratic National Convention. People care passionately about this stuff. And the Dems, bless them, are finally growing some spine in regard to reproduction rights, and many of them are getting stronger on strengthening the safety net. And it hasn’t been that long since the Madison, Wisconsin protests, has it?

Yes, we aren’t making as much progress on these other issues as we have on gay rights, for a host of reasons. And there’s been much more focus on marriage equality in recent months because, dammit, we seemed to be winning for a change.

But I don’t see us lefties abandoning these other issues. Prioritizing, maybe. And a lot of the action has been at state and not national level. But you go where the fight is.

Seriously, where do people keep their heads? I thought Lithwick, at least, was smarter than this.

The other column today that makes me want to smack the writer is in Politico, so yeah, it’s Politico. But Maggie Haberman is wringing her hands over what the poor Dems will do for a candidate in 2016 if Hillary Clinton doesn’t run. And I say, shut up shut up shut up shut up about whether Hillary Clinton or anybody else will run in 2016. After we went through 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, and part of 2008 being told that Hillary Clinton will be the Dem nominee in 2008, it’s inevitable, there is no one else who has a prayer of stopping her, you’d think that the pundits would have grown a bit more cautious about giving her the Miss Inevitability award yet again.

But no. They can’t let it go. Hillary Clinton’s political career is the crack cocaine of beltway pundits.