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When the Soros-backed online group MoveOn.org wants to strike contribution-inducing fear in the hearts of its liberal e-mail list, they know whose name to use:

Warning: A bizarre House race in upstate New York could end up giving a big national boost to Sarah Palin and the far right, and endangering health care reform in the House.
Here's how: In a three-way race, Doug Hoffman, a right-wing third party candidate, has gotten Sarah Palin's endorsement and become a cause célèbre for the far-right fringe. . . .
The right-wing teabagger activists who spent the summer disrupting town halls are showering Hoffman with donations and volunteers. And, unfortunately, it's working. . . .
If Hoffman wins, teabaggers and hate groups will have their own representative in Congress. The far right will be emboldened. And a victory for an anti-reform teabagger just before the big health care votes will send exactly the wrong message to Democrats who are nervous about their own re-election. . . .
It would dramatically strengthen the Sarah Palin wing of the Republican party. . . .

Et cetera, et cetera, and the e-mail directs recipients to this donations page. Former Clinton aide Paul Begala has also sent out a fundraising e-mail for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, warning about the "tea party crowd," invoking Palin's name, and depicting the Hoffman campaign as evidence that the "inmates have taken over the asylum."

Panicky liberals -- the kind of free publicity money can't buy! Of course, the Hoffman candidacy has also stirred fear in the hearts of some Republican worry-warts, but that's to be expected. The hand-wringers always have to have something to wring their hands about.