MICHAEL TOTTEN sums up the election, and the left’s problems:

Juan Cole would rather align himself with anti-American Iraqis like the blogger Riverbend. Okay, whatever. But I have no idea why he expects conservatives and centrists to do any such thing. Most people in this world don’t reflexively side with those who hate them. One reason he is in the political wilderness and I’m not is because he does and I don’t. . . . It’s not the right’s fault that it has come to this.

Indeed. Jeff Jarvis has further disagreements with Cole, and expresses them in his usual forthright fashion.