The "reality based community" spends most of its time in fantasy land. There are exceptions, brief excursions away from their fantasy homes.

Democrats need respectable, responsible resistance from conservatives to be good Democrats, just as tennis and poker players are no good facing potzers and fish. Another is that Obama needs to beat a contender, not a pushover, to be a good president. If you thought the last eight years were a nightmare, you should expect a completely unrestrained period of Democratic governance to be almost as awful.

Nearly got it, but it would in fact be much, much worse. The Democrats aren't about anything, they are just the opposition, and without anything to oppose they fall flat on their faces. Their unreasoned excesses were supported by those they opposed, leaned against, and have no balance to keep their feet when there is nothing to lean against.

It has been many, many decades since the Democrats had an idea. Republican ideas sustained them. They did a bit of embroidering on the margins of Republican ideas. Now that Republicans are out of ideas too all that is left is French style politics.

The French elite lacks purpose and is politically exhausted. As I argue in greater detail in my new book Politics of Fear, for the first time in the modern era the European political elites lack a project. They no longer have a mission to perform, and do not possess a distinct outlook that can inform their policies and day-to-day actions. . .

What the events in France demonstrate is that power means very little without purpose. Power and authority gain definition through a sense of direction. Without meaning, even the power of the military and the police loses much of its force. And the more this powerlessness becomes exposed, the more it encourages those who are estranged from society to have a go.

he presides over a political system where cliques of individuals fight for office and privilege and little else.

The sensible thing to do in this situation is to sharply reduce the size and power of government. If greatly reduced in size it wouldn't matter so much that politics is just the pursuit of power and privilege by some of the worst among us. Unfortunately, Democrats usually seek to enlarge government, to increase the size of the payroll and so the number of dependents who can help keep them in power. The Republicans in recent times did their share of payroll padding too. That's part of their fall from grace, a betrayal of their principles, a symptom of political exhaustion and lack of purpose.

Perhaps, once out of office, the Republicans will remember something about how they had taken power before, and begin once again to make aguments appropriate to the times, if for no other reason than that they will have so many examples of failure and corruption from the Democrats. It seems unlikely right now, but the best outcome for this time would be divided government. When either party holds a large share of power things get worse for society.

All of this is crushingly obvious, yet it seems that our elites, our intellectuals, spend all of their time and energy denying reality for the venal purpose of advancing themselves and settling old grudges. They have ceased being of value to society. The exhaustion of the political class was preceded by the exhaustion of the intellectual class. The rot began long ago. I suspect that politics will remain a meaningless exercise in power seeking, more like organized crime than governance, until some fresh and sensible ideas gain prominence.