From his column in today's Post: "In the primary, Lamont found his most prominent support on the far-left flank of the Democratic Party. His organization was a hand-me-down from the Howard Dean presidential campaign, bolstered by a blizzard of Internet blogs from outside his home state. His roster of visiting campaigners was uniformly of the same political slant--notably Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and Rep. Maxine Waters of California."

How, then, does Broder account for 52% voting for Lamont, with a very high turnout for a non-presidential primary in August??

I guess they must have been brainwashed by all those soft-on-national-security, far-left Deaniacs and bloggers.

Broder has never been remotely fair to Howard Dean, always painting him as a radical left candidate when his record as Governor of Vermont and as a presidential candidate wholly belied that. He shares the MSM cluelessness and dismissiveness not only of the blogosphere but to feelings of disgust with Republican-run Washington that are widespread in the country, not something Howard Dean or bloggers could concoct out of whole cloth.

I respected him more back in the days when his counsel consistently, with respect to threats to the newspaper business in particular, was always words to the effect of: provide value and you will have an audience. I suggest that he and far too many of the Washington pundit class are caught in a time warp.

He notes later on: "The opposition to current policy in Iraq is building--and so is dissatisfaction with a Washington that seems to be drowning in partisanship and incapable of breaking its policy gridlock on immigration, energy or health care...In this environment, incumbents of neither party can feel safe."

Opposition to policy in Iraq building? No kidding! Where has he been? It's been substantial for several years now. Pity it has taken Tuesday's election results for him to notice. Perhaps if 80% of the public decides enough is enough so long as there is no apparent viable plan in place, that would really get his attention and keep him from dismissing critics of the war as the loony left and its dupes.

Note as well the dissatisfaction he senses not with the Republican party, which controls the federal government, but with Washington writ-large. It wouldn't be, say, extreme partisanship by the party in power, an utter failure of leadership at the level of the President, and a simple lack of any serious interest in dealing with any of these issues by the Republican party that might account for the unresponsiveness in Washington, would it? No--it's Washington writ large that is the problem. It's the usual double standard: when things are going badly under the Democrats, it's the Democrats' fault. When things are going badly when the Republicans are running things, it's Washington's fault.

The disgust is real, it is widespread, and it is not going away until some changes are made. Oblivious until now, apparently, of these developments, Broder drips with condescension and smugness towards those who reflect them.