Gloomy conservatives

The right wing is properly blaming itself for the fix it’s in | Joel Belz

Krieg Barrie/WORLD

Talk to a typical Democrat these days, and—in spite of the daily dust-ups between Hillary and Barack—you'll find a good bit of satisfaction. "Why not?" one lifelong Democrat asked me last week. "When we've got two candidates, both attracting record crowds and record primary votes, and we could win with either one of them, why shouldn't we be excited?"

The Republicans I know aren't nearly as chipper. Their candidate is already locked in—but that's a fact that most loyalists are more frustrated by and resigned to than excited about. I just spent a weekend with a few hundred such folks, and although most of them aren't Presbyterians or Calvinists, they still act like them in the sense that they're pessimistically hunkering down for the dark grimness that seems to have been predestined for election year 2008.