Orrin Judd links to this astonishing passage by Michael Kinsley:

Obviously the party that has lost the White House, both houses of Congress, and now the courts needs some new ideas and new energy. But it seems undeniably true to me—though many deny it—that the Republicans simply play the game better. You're not supposed to say that. At Pundit School they teach you: Always go for the deeper explanation, not the shallower one. Never suggest that people (let alone "the" people) can be duped.

OK, it's not all that astonishing. Kate O'Beirne recently noted another example of this phenomenon in her interview with Kathryn Jean Lopez:

Lopez: In 1977, Jean Stapleton, hanging out with Bella Abzug announced that Edith Bunker would support the ERA "if she understood it." Does that pretty much sum up what the feminist establishment thinks of many American women?

O'Beirne: The modern feminist movement has never enjoyed the allegiance of a majority of American women and that condescension represents feminists' explanation when confronted with the evidence. The rest of us are too stupid to recognize our oppression. One of the most celebrated feminists you'll meet in the book dismisses the surveys reporting that married women are happier than single women by attributing their contentment to being "slightly mentally ill."

Or as Orrin writes, "Nothing has served the Democrats worse than their insistence over the last twenty-five years that the rejection of liberalism and return to power of conservatism are a fluke and as soon as people wake up the stars will realign themselves".