Stop scolding, Dems!, shaping the new GOP and other commentary

Conservative: Stop Scolding, Dems!“One lesson the left should learn from this election is that you don’t win elections by becoming an angry scold,” notes F.H.Buckley at The Wall Street Journal.

“It isn’t patriotic to think that American history is a list of things that should never have happened and that half of Americans are garbage”; “today’s left is elitist and the right is populist.” “An older set of progressives” took pride in America “and how we differed from other countries.” So: “If the left wants to find a way back, it should start by taking ownership of everything in our past, the good and the admitted ill.” “Our absolution from history, and our sense of patriotism, can be found only within history, which has always offered its sources of redemption.”From the right: Shaping the New GOP“When Donald Trump took the oath of office in 2017, his party was divided”; eight years later, “he is the GOP’s undisputed leader,” observes Matthew Continetti at The Free Press.“The Republican Party has changed in a more populist and nationalist direction,” and its 2024 platform adopts “positions on trade, entitlements, and peace that had been long associated with the Democratic Party.” Meanwhile, the Democratic Party’s “tolerance of social disorder and its adoption of equity over merit, open borders, gender ideology, and censorship,” plus the Biden inflation and migrant crisis, brought in “a decisive shift toward the Trump Republicans across the country.” But beware the “danger” in taking Trump’s “decisive victory as an unqualified endorsement of his personality and program.”Libertarian: Kamala Couldn’t Win a Fair Fight“As pundits, pollsters and wonks” try to explain why “Kamala Harris did so poorly on Election Day,” Reason’s Christian Britschgi offers “a clear, obvious, overall reason”: “her experience as a prosecutor left her ill-prepared to compete in a fair fight.” In that care...