Fineman

Howard Fineman's rather stark assessment in Newsweek:

The vicious, down-to-the-wire race for the White House last November obscured the key fact about political life as it will be lived in Washington starting in January: Republicans, after decades of assaulting the citadel that Franklin Roosevelt built, have taken control of the place more completely than they ever did in the days of Ike, Richard Nixon or Ronald Reagan—each of whom was forced to govern in the midst of what essentially was a city controlled by Democrats. That's not the case anymore. The Democrats are leaderless and reeling, seemingly bereft of inspiring ideas. They face a president who is the first since 1936 to win re-election while boosting his party's majorities in the Congress. The "mainstream" media, historically sympathetic to Democrats, are on the defensive, financially and journalistically; the GOP is even taking over the K Street lobbies, an Alamo of unrepentant Democrats.

The stuff about Kentucky is interesting too.