The Soul of the Party

All their power had gone: that, to begin with.

All power to shape, to lead, to serve the public at large or their cronies in private — whichever had profited them more in any instance during their years in clover. The party had lost the White House and control of the entire Congress, to boot.

Almost as bad: the media spotlight had shifted, abruptly, onto America’s shiny new objects: the new Democratic president and the vice-president — the expectancy and rose of the fair state. POTUS had only to utter a few facile lines in a speech, or issue the most mundane…