Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater on Richard Cohen's column. Remember, his columns are usually reasonably reasonable, and once you distill out the whining he makes a couple of valid points in today's column.
Facts are boring, but let's consider:
a) Reagan wouldn't have won in 1980 but for EMK's assault on Carter from the left; there were normally-Democratic voters that year who voted for John Anderson or some of the other moonbat alternatives. Some of those were certainly inspired by Teddy's unrestrained disgust with Carter.
b) George W. Bush would not have won in 2000 had Ralph Nader not assaulted Gore from the left, drawing enough votes in Florida to put W in the White House. (bitch all you want about the Supreme Court - that's like complaining about bad referee's calls in a football game. If you look at the numbers, Nader voters won the election for Bush, regardless of what was done by any Court.)
c) We constantly see posts here on Daily Kos to the effect that "if the damn Democrats don't do such-and-so, screw 'em, I'll vote Green."
That's one valid point in Cohen's column that we need to pay attention to.
The second point we need to remember is his use of the word "sanctimonious." Remember - a hell of a lot of our friends and neighbors bought into the fraud that was perpetrated by the White House. No one - no one - wants to have the fact that s/he was dumb enough to get frauded by some fast-talking huckster rubbed in his/her face for the rest of their life. That's just human nature. As far as the media goes (sorry, Richard, that includes you), they deserve to have their noses rubbed into it for the rest of their careers. But as far as the guy who fills your prescription at the pharmacy, he's already pissed off enough at himself for buying into Bush's line of shit that he doesn't need us to remind him he was a sucker.
Most of the rest of Cohen's column was a bunch of crybaby stuff, though it confirms the worthlessness of e-mailing your Congresspeople and Senators - who can read 1000 emails/day? (other than scanning the subject lines.)
What we need to take out of his column is this: We're winning now. We need to show the discipline to accept that there will be some Dems elected this fall that don't make our personal top-ten list of favorite legislators, and not flee the party on that basis. We also need to be gracious in victory. Despite the fact that incomprehensible to us that anyone could be so stupid to have supported either invading Iraq or George Bush in the first place, some of the people who did both aren't complete idiots, they were just wrong. If we treat them like idiots, they'll just vote for McCain in '08, and we'll be right back where we are now.
Sorry to sound so preachy -