DEMSPLAINING: 11 Rationalizations for Democrats' Election Whupping

From the Koch Brothers to the voters themselves, Dems blame everything but their own policies.

It’s a rebuilding year for the Democratic party, probably the first of many, made more bitter because it ends an eight-year period during which talk of permanent Democratic rule did not seem wild.

Resounding defeats on Tuesday in elections across the country stunned Democrats, who were betrayed not just by faulty polling but by their own mad hopes. The party had banked on a permanent shift — by age, gender, ethnicity, or all three — that would eliminate all Republican support and immanentize California-style Democratic permanence. (As it happened, even the Golden State turned a couple of House seats over to Republicans.) It’s the ordinariness of the news that makes it so painful. After all that hype, Democrats learn that even President Barack Obama, a figure of national transfiguration who once lifted us above rising tides and salved the trauma of history, is subject to the same six-year crisis that afflicts every two-term president. It can’t be easy to accept.

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