We have been here before, you know. In the run-up to the 1996 US presidential election, the Republicans spent a great deal of time and money railing against a corrupt, sleazy, hypocritical, schmoozing, insincere, Son of Satan, writes Breda O'Brien.
Surely only idiots could fail to see that a vote for him was a vote for the worst aspects of American character.
What they failed to perceive was that Bill Clinton was an archetypal "good ole boy", a type recognisable to anyone who had spent more than half an hour in the American South. Sure he is a bit of a reprobate, but he is easy to like. The Republicans, with their honourable, trustworthy but very stiff Bob Dole hadn't a chance, with or without the Ross Perot sideshow.
The rest of the world understood the 1996 election. They like Clinton, too, the wily old dog. No such understanding is extended to George W. Bush. Not that anyone has accused W. of being sleazy since he stopped drinking, given that his patent love for Laura borders on the embarrassing.
He has other qualities that make him very likeable to middle America, but unlike Clinton, those qualities are invisible to the rest of the world.
They are also invisible to the Democrats, and that is why they lost. Just as the Republicans failed to understand Clinton's appeal, and the effects of a buoyant economy, the Democrats signally failed to understand Bush's appeal, and the fact that "It's the morality, stupid" is just as effective a slogan as Clinton's better known riff on the theme.
In 1996, the Republicans thought that their success in the mid-term elections practically guaranteed them the White House. In 2004, the Democrats knew they had a battle on their hands, but they felt sure that given the state of the economy, the young soldiers being killed in Iraq, and the tax cuts that favoured the rich, that they were well capable of winning. They simply could not see that issues like gay marriage, stem cell research, abortion, and support for strong, traditional marriages could be huge issues, because no reasonable, intelligent person could hold such views.
Therefore, the only people worried by such things were a few rednecks, and surely nice, liberal people outnumbered the rednecks? Indeed they do, but they do not outnumber the intelligent, sophisticated Americans who do not share the classic Democrat position on these key issues.
In 1996, the Republicans were punished for their arrogance, and their failure to understand their fellow Americans. The Democrats were punished in this election in the same way.
If they field Hillary in 2008, they will have proven that they still don't get it. Is it all down to the elusive quality of "likeability", which no-one has ever accused Hillary of having in abundance? It is a factor, but arrogance is a bigger factor.
Let us state it in the simplest possible way. If you persist in painting the President of the United States as a moron, and that by definition anyone who voted for him is a bigger moron, it is not an easy way to win friends and influence people.
Similarly, if you have no idea why anyone would ever want to challenge a woman's right to choose, you have little chance of garnering the vote of that person. It is not difficult to understand why someone might oppose abortion, if you can silence your prejudices long enough to listen. You may not agree, but you might end up acknowledging the bona fides of those who believe the right to life trumps the right to choose.
To some degree, the left brought this on themselves, through a blindness to their own double standards.
There have been mutterings about vast, right wing conspiracies orchestrated by think-tanks funded by reactionaries. However, when George Soros donates $13 million to various left-wing movements, that is merely George showing civic spirit.
The reality is that from the 1970s, academia and the media were dominated by a rigid, liberal orthodoxy. It was practically impossible to hold conservative views, no matter how thoughtful, and to achieve tenure in a mainstream American university. The media was dominated by the same kind of liberal elite. So those denied access to academic posts poured their considerable intellectual talents into think-tanks. Those denied access to the airwaves went out and found other outlets, particularly in radio. Some of the new media was atrocious, rabble-rousing stuff, bordering on incitement to hatred, and verging on blasphemy in the way it identified God's interests with American interests. But some of it was more reasonable. The Democrats just didn't listen to it.
People have spoken about the divisive nature of the presidential election. Yet, it is inescapably true that some issues are inherently divisive, and will always arouse strong feelings. Abortion is one: taxes are another.
Is America condemned to a bitter divisiveness, then, given the vast differences in worldview among its citizens? The answer is no, for a number of reasons. We can paint a map red and blue, but most real people are some kind of shade of purple. Walking stereotypes exist, but most people are more complex.
Secondly, we have regular evidence that people are capable of more nuanced and less abrasive positions. After elections are over, and this happens everywhere, including Ireland, the debate takes on a different atmosphere. With nothing left to win or lose, activists acknowledge problems with their own arguments, and their own parties, which mere hours earlier they had been defending to the death. If it were possible to have that kind of engagement and humility beforehand, differences and divisions would not automatically slide into cultural civil war.
The Republicans learned from their time in the cultural wilderness. They used their knowledge of the insecurities, worries and deeply held values of their fellow Americans to ensure a narrow but decisive victory. Will the Democrats also have the humility to learn? When Democrats speak of divisiveness, they find it hard to see that they play any part in the rancour of that divide. After all, they are the reasonable, tolerant, broadminded ones. It is others who are stupid, rigid and inflexible. Until Democrats can move beyond this arrogance, they will continue to have more inexplicable defeats, that is, defeats inexplicable to no-one but themselves.