P.S. Forgot to mention: you're falling into the "liberals must think like me" trap. The American left is a seething mess of competing interests, every race, creed, color, you name it. Compared to the right, it looks like the U.N. I've lived among liberals my whole life and they can't organize anything.

The problem is, you're thinking like a conservative: "what would we do in their position?" The right is organized, strategic, and mind-bogglingly monolithic by comparison to the left.

So yes, way too much conspiracy. The left does the strategic thing if they stumble into it, otherwise no. And it's not a question of smarts, just that it's hard to get a disparate collection of interests to focus. Lots of smart liberals, but collectively they act dumb.