ED DRISCOLL: It’s Deja Malaise All Over Again. “Welcome back Carter — but then, arguably, from the implosion of the doomed Great Society onward, liberalism, progressivism, leftism, Obamaism — whatever it chooses to call itself this week — has never recovered from its own seemingly permanent crisis of confidence, simply because its own FDR-LBJ-style cargo cult view of the glories of big government is itself unachievable, as with all forms of magical thinking.” I repeat, at this point a Carter rerun is a best-case scenario — and an increasingly implausibly best-case scenario at that.

Related: Roger Simon: Liberalism: The Decline Of An Illusion. “What Republicans are now confronting is an empty machine. . . . I have no idea if Republicans will end their circular firing squad and unite sufficiently to right our country, but one thing seems abundantly clear from the events of the last weeks, including Tuesday’s election in which Terry McAuliffe barely eked out a victory over the unexciting Ken Cuccinelli. Liberalism in our country is in a more precarious position than ever. It may not even really exist. Liberalism as practiced in today’s America is a chimera, not actually an ideology but an alliance of interest groups controlled by elites for the preservation of their (the elites’) wealth and power.”