"Why Is He Losing?" was the title I initially gave my last column here two weeks ago, and my Nation editor, Roane Carey, worried that this was maybe too pessimistic, amid supposed portents of a sudden swell for Kerry. So we called the column "You Can't Blame Nader for This." Both headlines turned out to be true, and here we are amid the ashes of a terrible defeat for the Democrats and for liberal hopes.

A distraught young person called me in tears on the morning after. I tried to console her by saying that things looked pretty dark in 1980, when Ronald Reagan and the Republicans swept into power, yet only twelve years later we had a draft-dodging adulterer ensconced in the White House and the Democrats back in control of Congress for a couple of years.

This didn't help, so I rushed her back to 1956, when Eisenhower was re-elected and the skies looked dark. But only four years later we had a Democratic war-hero adulterer on the parapet of Camelot and the Summer of Love only seven years down the road.

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