TAKING THE ELECTION HARD: I’m watching Meet the Press rerun on CNBC, and Maureen Dowd looks absolutely terrible. It’s like she’s aged ten years since I last saw her. Her manner is subdued, and bitter, too. I guess that explains her post-election writing. It’s striking to see a pundit taking the election so hard — most actual Democratic politicians seem to be maintaining more personal distance.

UPDATE: Reader Wendy Cook emails:

I was watching C-Span last night, which was airing yet another post-election symposium of media pundits — Jonathan Alter, Pat Buchanan, ABC’s Carole Simpson among others. At one point a visibly angry Simpson held up a map of red states alongside a map of slave states from the 1860s. See, she said, present-day red states are the same states that were pro-slavery! (As an Ohio native, you can imagine my confusion). Her point was the argument of “letting the states decide” issues scares her. She then went on to castigate Bush because “despite everything he says” she’s convinced he’s simply going to roll back entitlements.

I’m sure ABC News would like to thank Ms. Simpson for so effectively representing their objectivity and professionalism. And after watching several of these C-Span things, I think their true, diabolical intent may not be to analyze the election, but in fact to reveal the whininess, pettiness and rank bias of our nation’s best-known journalists.

I didn’t see that, but I’ve seen similar displays, and the same Confederacy-based arguments, elsewhere. It’s certainly revealing.