the far center

Bill Clinton biographer Joe Conason begins a recent article with this sentence:

In certain precincts on the American left — and especially in some places where the far left blurs into the far right — it is considered clever to dismiss the Russia investigation as a relic of the Cold War, an opportunistic Clintonite ploy, or both.

Yes, Joe, that's the "far center," where reality blurs into reality. Dismissal of the New Red Scare isn't half as clever as the scare itself, concocted by Clintonites to distract from their incompetent campaign, where they insisted the US was in great shape after eight years of Obama. The scare isn't so much a Cold War relic, though, as McCarthyism 2.0 -- an attempt to use foreign enemies to distract from corruption at home, while justifying an ongoing military buildup.