Conservatives fight each other while liberals fight against voters

David Brooks speculates on why conservatives have succeeded:

Conservatives have not triumphed because they have built a disciplined and efficient message machine. Conservatives have thrived because they are split into feuding factions that squabble incessantly. As these factions have multiplied, more people have come to call themselves conservatives because they've found one faction to agree with.

Sounds to me like the “New Coke” theory. Meanwhile Jacob Laksin reviews Byron York’s “The Vast Left Wing Conspiracy” and why liberals have failed:

Beneath the patina of confidence, however, the left-wing conspiracy often seems pitiable, as desperate as it is determined. Above all, its members are angry--at the perceived injustice of the 2000 presidential election, at the prospect of long-term Republican governance, at John Kerry's inept campaigning. Even, it appears, at being called angry.

It is the anger that does them in. Resting his case on much original reporting, Mr. York convincingly shows that the activist left mistook its base--2.5 million strong and anti-Bush to the (mostly white) man--for the mainstream electorate, as if fury and contempt were the only logical responses to the Bush presidency. Reciting the mantra that it was "too big to fail," the left wing bought into the conspiracy of its own vastness. An inability to connect with swing voters followed, and electoral defeat.

Speaking of angry white men, Mickey Kaus recounts another “you stupid voters!” moment for DNC chair Howard Dean: “From vilification to condescension. This is progress in the Democratic Party.”