Imagine a movie: Maureen Dowd is seen thrashing around on her bed, clearly in the grips of a gruesome nightmare. When she awakes, it is not to relief but to the horrifying discovery that reality is worse than anything her fevered brain had conjured.
That is the sense of hopelessness, desperation and depression in which Dowd drowns in her New York Times column of today. The piece is one long lament, as Dowd decries the Dems' fate. Not only are they on the brink of losing--they are losing to opponents who are not merely wrong but "the worst" and "insane."
Dowd casts matters in absolutely apocalyptic terms. She depicts the right [symbolized by Christine O'Donnell] as Yeats' beast of the Second Coming, aligned against Obama, whom she portrays as a weary and reluctant savior.
What Dem, glorying in the apotheosis of Inauguration Day, could have imagined things falling so far, so fast? Surely not Dowd, seen reduced to a pitiable personage beating her fists against a bitter fate.
