In the last few days, I've probably read more than forty pieces written by deeply concerned Democrats trying to rationalize what happened to their party on November 8, but not a single one has even suggested the possibility that the people and policies personified by Obama and Clinton may simply be both morally wrong and broadly unacceptable to Americans.  In every case, they see fault in the messaging, not the message and not the messengers.

Many, for example, blame James Comey for bringing some aspects of Hillary Clinton's behavior to the fore, but not one seriously condemns Hillary Clinton for that behavior.  Similarly, some blame James O'Keefe or WikiLeaks but hold the leaks, not the contents of the leaks, responsible for their defeat – and not a single one explicitly condemns the post-election anti-Trump rioters and whoever is paying for them.

That same self-deception characterizes senior Democratic analyses with respect to policy failures.  Some, for example, observe that many Trump voters rejected Clinton as likely to continue Obama's commitment to wildly destructive policies including Obamacare and massive support for illegal immigration, but they see this as an Obama-Clinton failure to communicate the obvious correctness of these policies instead of as the reasoned rejection of progressive anti-American dogma it really was.  Somewhat more subtly, and certainly more revealingly because it amounts to criticizing the campaign for not misleading the voter effectively enough, many discuss specific messaging failures while utterly ignoring the disconnect between what they think should have been said and what their party stands for.

Consider, for example, this bit from a multi-author Washington Post apologia headlined "A Series of Strategic Mistakes likely Sealed Clinton's Fate":

"Obviously we don't know if it would have been different if she had a more consistent economic message," Greenberg added, "but I think it's hard to win without it."

Clinton made a pledge to build "an economy that works for everyone, not just those at the top," a mantra repeated in nearly every speech while promising to be rebuild the middle class and create more pathways into it. She outlined myriad plans and proposals that she said would help deliver new jobs and rebuild U.S. manufacturing.

Yet, there was no simple or overarching message that tied it all together. As a rallying cry against economic injustice, a pledge to be "the small-business president," for example, sounded bloodless.

This seems like sensible introspection and could even pass for thoughtful – except that the party's actual policy platform and its record in power amount to a war on small businesses and the middle classes carried out by people who think the gap between the very poor and the very rich is filled entirely by racist, homophobic bitter clingers squatting in flyover country.

Middle America saw the absurdity of presenting Mrs. Clinton, a one-percenter with opposing public and private opinions who prefers the likes of Goldman Sachs, George Soros, and Mark Zuckerburg to the company of contemptible deplorables like Joe the Plumber, Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, and Dwayne Riston, as the small business president, but the Washington Post, the New York Times, and dozens of other left-wing media outlets simply do not.

Before the rapid industrialization of the South consequent on WWII, the Democrats honestly represented the big land owners, kleptocrats, and labor exploiters making up their Southern power base.  After that, of course, old money moved north, and the Democrats radically changed what they tell the voter, but the attitudes, the policies, and to some extent the key families involved haven't changed much – so the most ironic thing about almost all of the post-election introspection going on among senior Democrats today is that by and large, they blame their losses on the new media making people aware of this without themselves acknowledging any awareness of it at all.