VodkaPundit has a heart to heart with Democrats:

Yes, war kills children and other living things. Yes, Americans will die. But it’s not going to be 50,000 body bags over a ten-year span. And we’re not fighting some optional war to prop up a corrupt post-colonial regime. We’re fighting to defend the lives of your constituents. They know – it’s time you knew it, too.
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[comment]:
I've got to think that if at that Wellstone memorial service cum revival meeting, the son who was screaming almost hysterically, "We will win, we will win" was referring to the war against Al Quaeda instead of the war against Republicans, the Democratic Party would still be in control of the Senate, and perhaps the House too.

Posted by: Frankie Five Angels on November 8, 2002 05:29 AM

Victor Davis Hanson, The Self-destruction of the American left.

Mitch Berg takes on Garrison Keillor.

Peggy Noonan:

The argument as many Democrats frame it so far is: Should we tack left, or should we fight it out in the center for the center?

But that is essentially an argument about how to win. The bigger question, the one that really rose Tuesday night and demands an answer, is this: What is the Democratic Party's reason for being?
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They got the New Deal, and they got the Great Society. They got the welfare state. And you can argue they have been undone by their success.

Most of what they got they got long ago--long enough ago that the people of the United States have become used to the benefits, and long enough that they have experienced the costs. For, as we used to say, there's no such thing as a free lunch. The Democrats' programs cost plenty. And in time it wasn't the rich that were paying for it but the rich and the comfortable, and then the rich and the comfortable and the middle class, and then the working-class Joes and the waitresses at the diner.

The Democrats in time came not to seem like the party of the little guy but the party that taxed the little guy so Danny Rostenkowski could go on a junket.

Eric Raymond analyses the election.

The End of the Clinton Era (Gregory Hlaty thinks Dems are smarter than they have so far proven to be.)

So why should we persist in believing in the political acumen of Bill Clinton? All of his backwoods cunning was to the benefit of…. himself! Instead of building a platform of ideas for his party to run on after he left office, his administration was largely fueled by intrigue and microinitiatives. What’s left of the Clinton legacy? A foreign press as sycophantic as it is clueless, fat speaking fees and nookie around the world for himself, and a Senate seat for his wife to take comfort in. For his party, defeat and years of Parsifal-like wanderings until they forge a new consensus.

If they have any sense, the Democrats will curse the name of Bill Clinton into the far, far future.

Deborah Orin blames Clintonistas, but says:

But instead of dumping McAuliffe, the Democratic rumor mill said some former Clinton White House aides like John Podesta might be recruited to bolster the DNC - strengthening rather than weakening Clinton's hold on the party apparatus.

Mike McArdle:

The worst thing about Tuesday's election was that it didn't have to happen. It was a wasted chance, a blown opportunity that may be hard to get back. And if you're looking to place the blame don't point at the voters or the media or whacko conspiracy theories or even the Republicans. The blame belongs entirely with the Democrats themselves who ran out of appendages to shoot themselves in. You want people to go out and vote for you? Give them a reason to do so. They didn't.

Jonah Goldberg analyses the election.

Ramesh Ponnuru:

I keep hearing Democrats saying that their party ought to have taken Bush on over the war rather than supported him. You mean the Democrats weren't for war with Iraq? On the issue of whether to send our young men and women into harm's way, they didn't really think it was a good idea? They thought it would make America less secure? But they voted for it anyway? Or maybe the Democrats really did think the pro-war vote was right on the merits, but are now concluding that it was bad politics. So Iraq is a serious threat to Americans that war is necessary to prevent, but Democrats should have tried to stop it in order to pick up a few votes? Or do they just not have any particular position on war-and-peace? The post-election commentary by Democrats seems to me to make for a more savage indictment of them than anything they did pre-election.

Time:

Will Rogers once said that when Democrats form a firing squad they do it in a circle. Last night's Democratic collapse is sure to fuel infighting in the party, focused on one question: if bids by moderate candidates like New Hampshire Governor Jeanne Shaheen, Cleland and Colorado's Tom Strickland collapsed, should the party move to the left and be unabashedly populist? Or would that further isolate the party from the voters?

Croooow Blog on Gore's success as a campaigner.

Meanwhile, The Secret Master Plan begins!

GRUMBLE! If you re-log into Blogger, they treat you like you're new...

ELECTION ANALYSIS

Instapundit:

they're[tactics] supposed to be an adjunct to the message, not a substitute for the message. When you let them take over, you look like you don't have a message, and like you'll do anything to win. That was the import of the Wellstone funeral-cum-rally, and of a lot of other things that the Democrats have done, and it hurt them.

Isntapundit votes. (via At Swim Two Birds) :

You see, I'm liberal in my politics. No, you socialist, racist, guilty-envious, violently-discontented revolutionary whining statist vermin, I'm not like you. I'm liberal in the real sense, which means I have no desire to tell people whether they may or may not replace their teeth. Let them do as they please, and let me do as I please while you're at it. And kindly keep your nose out of my orifices.

Tacitus on the election.
Jen:

MN, the state that put the word "fun" into the word "funeral."
Duke column, also from atswimtwobirds:

Column: So-called liberals need to address the facts about terrorism

Bala Ambati (Sweep of Daylight)

It takes true courage to be a dove, but no honor accrues to being an ostrich.

David Frum's advice to the Democrats