What have the Democrats learned from this defeat?

Not much, apparently. Mark Steyn on European liberal taxonomy:

Who exactly is being self-righteous here? In Britain and Europe, there seem to be two principal strains of Bush-loathing. First, the guys who say, if you disagree with me, you must be an idiot - as in the Mirror headline "How can 59,054,087 people be so DUMB?" Second, the guys who say, if you disagree with me, you must be a Nazi - as in Oliver James, who told The Guardian: "I was too depressed to even speak this morning. I thought of my late mother, who read Mein Kampf when it came out in the 1930s [sic] and thought, 'Why doesn't anyone see where this is leading?' "

It isn't much different, then from "the stifling coercive theology of political correctness enforced by a secular episcopate" over here.

I was feeling pretty apprehensive on Monday, but I had lived through disasters before. Mostly, I was worried that Kerry would either bail on the Iraqis, which would mark us as not to be trusted, so I was relieved when the election came out for standing by this fledging democracy and our allies in the coalition.

This report however makes me feel that we dodged a bullet. Kerry is not emotionally constituted for being president. He's a whiner and every bit as self-centered and arrogant as I would have guessed. Funny that Newsweek kept this report until after the election. If it had had stuff that made Bush look this weird, it would have been out two weeks before the election.

David Broder has some good advice for Democrats, but I don't expect them to take it very soon. Bill Clinton ran as a centrist, but the first thing he tried, once in office, was pure liberal. I suspect that the lesson the Dems will learn from this is to be more like Bill, and lie about what you really believe.

I'm not done worrying. I've seen something like this before--in the pages of the Book of Mormon.