and as Jennifer Rubin pointed out recently, on the whole, the Right has a better record on this one lately than the Left:
Some liberal commentators assure us they mean “no disrespect.” Others don’t even bother. They tell us Americans are confused or crazy, racist or irrational. Maybe all of these. The left punditocracy is in full meltdown, irate at the voters and annoyed at Obama. The contrast to the aftermath of the 2008 election is instructive.
After the across-the-board defeats in 2008, conservative pundits didn’t rail at the voters. You didn’t see the right blogosphere go after the voters as irrational (How could they elect someone so unqualified? They’ve gone bonkers!) with the venom that the left now displays. Instead, there was a healthy debate—what was wrong with the Republican Party and with the conservative movement more generally?
There hasn’t been enough soul-searching and self-criticism on the Right to make me comfortable with the thought of the Republican Party apparatchiki back in power so soon, but at least there’s been enough to make a real difference; and the Tea Party taking a big broom to the party establishment has helped, too. For the sake of the good of the country, I hope we see something similar on the Left if November does in fact turn out to be the electoral tsunami it looks like being.