Arrogance repudiated

First things first:
Onion Headline "Politicians Sweep Midterm Elections"
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Arrogance only ends in humiliation. And so it goes with Donald Rumsfeld.
Here's a frightening thought: How would the election have turned out had Bush's "guy for life" been fired before Nov. 7? A related queasy feeling everyone has about this whole election is that the Democrats are winning because the war is a failure. The liberals would not be cheering if soldiers weren't dying in increasing numbers. What if we were "winning" the war? What does winning the war mean -- to Democrats?

So this is a repudiation of Bush's incompetence and arrogance. But it's not an affirmation of Democrats.
It's fun to watch the X+Y=Zcause and effect -- get your ass kicked in an election and fire your widely hated defense secretary the next day. It has a narrative with a strong punch line, but getting caught up in that narrative might fool us. The real problem, is best summed up in this essay from the London Review of Books. It's hard to read -- in typical fuck-you-i'm-smart intellectual fashion that is inaccessible (triangulation? deliquiescence? WTF dude) but illuminating, as long as you've got a dictionary next to you. It's got America's left down pat and it aint pretty.

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n18/judt01_.html

And here's the American left's response:
http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewPrint&articleId=12138