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Damn that partisanship, and damn both sides equally for this sordid state of affairs. The fact that character assassination of Democrats is a fundamental tenet of the peculiar institution of the Republican party does not mean that it isn't Democrats' fault for not trying harder to be friendly. A little honey works better than vinegar, after all. Except ... except, it actually doesn't. The Republicans rolled them and rolled them and rolled them; the GOP took total control of the US government and then they rolled them again. All the while the alleged liberal Richard Cohen has been wandering through Georgetown drawing rooms having conversations about people's mothers and, apparently, watching others weep as they confront the fact that they are responsible for killing people (which is, I agree, better than when the president lifted his fist and said "feels good!" in the moments before he ordered the invasion of Iraq.)

The media elite's wide eyed shock that average Americans are angry about this state of affairs is simply mind-boggling. The polls show that it isn't just the "angry" left, it's the entire Democratic party, most of the independents and a growing number of Republicans too. Does he not know how his condescending elitism sounds to the people who read his column? (Joe Klein similarly goes on and on about populism in his new book Politics Lost, his tone dripping with contempt for the idea that common rabble are challenging those who know what's best for them.)

We are dealing with a political culture so insular that that they no longer resemble the seat of power in a democracy but rather the court of Versailles. Richard Cohen and the rest of the professional political class in the capital are misreading what is happening just as Louis XVI did when he asked "This is a revolt?" ---- to which the duc de la Rochefoucauld-Liancourt replied, "No, sire. It is a revolution."

For the first time, I'm truly feeling the democratizing power of the internet (and I'm realizing why the powers that be are trying to cut off its oxygen.) The beltway courtiers are nibbling idly at their cakes, unnerved by the unruly mob of common men committing drive-by emails and digital lynch mobs and storming the stifling, airless social club that has become the nation's punditocrisy. They don't realize yet that this isn't a fringe group of long haired hippies (not that there's anything wrong with that) who are going to make the whole country hate us for our unruly ways. It ain't 1968. There's a lot of water under that drawbridge.