An unthinking or insane leftist -- in other
words, most modern leftists.
Moonbat can also be used as an adjective, e.g. a moonbat professor. According to the Wikipedia entry for moonbat, the word was coined in 2002 by the Editor of Samizdata, Perry de Havilland, and was a variation on the name of radical
British activist and columnist George Monbiot.
Originally, the term "moonbat" was intended to be more politically neutral, and described wackos on the
left and the right, but it quickly acquired its current usage of being applied
almost exclusively to those on the left.
The term also references the
moon much in the same way that "lunatic" refers to the insanity-causing powers of the full
moon (
luna =
moon). Bloggers occasionally analyze the behavior patterns of various moonbat "species" as if they were actual animals, and
even give them satirical Linnaean taxonomical names, such as "moonbattus berkeleyensis".
The entry in the Samizdata glossary indicates that Perry originally coined the full phrase "barking moonbat"; apparently "moonbat" is just a subsequent shortened version of "barking moonbat," rather than being a pre-existing term that was lengthened to barking moonbat.
Worker #1 "Did you
see those moonbats on the news staging another one of their
useless protests?"
Worker #2 "Yeah, all
eight of them."
Worker #1 "Man, they need to get real jobs."