The Clinton campaign's full-scale effort to turn this election into a referendum on Vladimir Putin is causing liberals like Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor of The Nation, and Glenn Greenwald, the energizing force behind The Intercept, much heartburn. Here is Ms. van den Heuvel wondering what the heck is going on:

"How does new Cold War – which ends space for dissent, hurts women & children, may lead to nuclear war – help what Clinton claims she is for?"

According to both vanden Heuvel and Greenwald, the Clintonian assault on Russia – the crude, J. Edgar-Hooverish smear campaign conducted against WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, and especially Donald Trump – is an opportunistic deviation from "true" progressive values. It's a corruption of American liberalism that has nothing to do with ideology and everything to do with winning the election. As Greenwald puts it, in answer to vanden Heuvel's question:

"Exploiting Cold War rhetoric & tactics has helped her win the election. I guess the idea is: deal with the aftermath and fallout later."