OK, I know that the Dems have gone off the deep end, and you know that the Dems have gone off the deep end, but when the Washington Post says that the Dems have gone off the deep end, you know they have to be in real trouble.

It certainly would be fair now to argue that the logic was wrong. There was a cogent case to be made against the war, and even those who supported it might now say that the absence of any uncovered weapons of mass destruction, or the continuing violence against Americans, gives them, in hindsight, a different view. There’s plenty to criticize in the administration’s postwar effort too. What isn’t persuasive, or even very smart politically, is to pretend to have been fooled by what Mr. Gore breathlessly calls the Bush “systematic effort to manipulate facts in service to a totalistic ideology.”

I’m surprised that no one else picked up on this quote from Gore, which had me scratching my head when I heard him say it (it doesn’t appear in his submitted text for the speech).

What in the world is a “totalistic ideology”? When I plug the word into dictionary.com, I get:

adj : of or relating to the principles of totalitarianism according to which the state regulates every realm of life; “totalitarian theory and practice”; “operating in a totalistic fashion” [syn: totalitarian]

Is it a verbal gaffe (in which case, a la Bush, of course we can expect the media to be all over it, right?). Or is it a way of calling Mr. Bush a totalitarian while retaining “plausible deniability,” which is either Clintonian or Nixonian, depending on your political predilections?

Either way, why hasn’t this aspect of Gore’s little rant gotten more attention?