"ABOARD THE SS VEENDAM, Caribbean -- The mere thought, much less the fact, of 400 leftists on a Caribbean cruise is both hilarious and absurd. Naturally, we all vied to come up with the best line about it: 'This floatin' palace of populism' (Jim Hightower), 'The first cruise of the vanguard of the proletariat' (Ivins). Chris Hitchens took the unapologetic route: 'Nothing's too good for the working class.' But poor Victor Navasky, the wily and parsimonious publisher of 'The Nation' magazine, who staged this leftist cruise as a fund-raiser for 'The Nation', took great gobs of guff from lefties who wanted to know why we weren't in the worst slums of Haiti building housing for the poor. The answer is: because the Wily and Parsimonious Navasky couldn't figure out how to make helping the poor pay to help The Nation.

So sail we did upon the briny deep from Fort Lauderdale to HalfMoon Cay to St. Maarten and St. Thomas, from one lovely isle set in clear, aquamarine waters to the next. All the while furiously debating economic globalization, issues of race, gender and class, the future of labor, the evils of privatization, why Bill Clinton should 'really' be impeached and other burring issues of the day.

It was so much fun 'The Texas Observer' is going to copy it as a fundraiser -- except the 'Observer', being even more impecunious than 'The Nation', is contemplating a canoe trip in the Big Bend with Steve Fromholz along for entertainment.

Among The Nation's entertainers was the magazine's resident poet, Calvin Trillin, who also happens to be the greatest living pundit. I say this because last January, when it was first learned that Bill Clinton had diddled a White House intern, it was Trillin and Trillin alone who said, 'Aha, this will cost Newt Gingrich his job.' Unfortunately, Trillin didn't write this down anywhere, but he says he said it, so it's bound to be true.

Clinton himself provoked interesting reactions among the leftists, the most common being furious denunciation. But I noticed an interesting phenom among the lefty joumalists -- you could find practically no one among the media types who would say a good word for Clinton (though most think he shouldn't be impeached over Lewinsky). On the other hand, Clinton is far more popular with the people (i.e., the non-media types on the cruise -- labor leaders, peaceniks, enviros, etc.) than he is with the lefty press. After an impeachment panel, one woman in the audience, most upset, rose and said, 'I think Hillary Clinton was right: There is a right-wing conspiracy and you're part of it.'

Her reaction was provoked in part by Hitchens, who hates Clinton so much he has become a Ken Starr leftist (now there's a small group), and Alex Cockburn, a professional contrarian, who believes scandals are delightful and impeachment should be encouraged -- we should just keep impeaching everyone in power, one after the other. Hitchens, a noted contrarian himself, delivered a lovely critique of the American mania for consensus and bipartisanship, both of which he deplored, and quoted an Israeli friend of his who reports, 'Encouraging signs of polarization are developing.' Those of us who are from states where many people carry guns were less enthusiastic about increased polarization.

Eric Alterman, a media critic, still thinks there is an explanation for impeachment beyond Republican folly and that is that it kills off Clinton's 'relatively progressive' agendas by tying up the entire political system for another year. Alterman argues that those on the margins of society who most need some government help, or at least the government not to be actively against them, are the most affected, 'The people who cannot afford to go on cruises will be paying for our purity.'

Dan Ellsberg, the peace activist, who tends to think in larger themes, is of the opinion that impeaching Clinton for lying to the American public and perjury trivializes those offenses: He promptly launched into a hair-curling litany of genuinely important things about which presidents and other officials have lied to us, mainly war and peace. By the time Ellsberg got through, I was given new consolation by the fact that at least one country is trying to arrest Augusto Pinochet (who was put into power by the United States and supported by us) for crimes against humanity. It's still not too late to get Henry Kissinger indicted as a war criminal.

Another theme of the discussions was the left itself, and whether it should try to create a platform that would appeal to the majority of Americans (by de-emphasizing some things lefties really believe in, like affirmative action) or just stay on the fringes of national political life, putting pressure on the Democrats. The populists were majoritarian and, I thought, noticeably more optimistic than those of other varieties of leftiness. But then, I am one" (Molly Ivins, star-telegram.com, December 16, 1998).