Everyone who engages in politics, or who thinks about public policy, wants to believe that history is on their side. For leftists, such a belief comes with the territory. They retain the view of Marx, lifted in part from Hegel, that history is steadily progressing on a predetermined path towards their vision of the future. That’s why, when the outcome of an election suggests otherwise, left-liberals tend to lash out at both the opposition and the electorate (“What’s the matter with Kansas?”) with more than a little hysteria.
By contrast, conservatives traditionally are pessimistic. To be sure, Ronald Reagan provided the movement with a needed coat of optimism. But when elections turn out badly, that coat tends to wash away for a while, leaving some conservatives with a sense that, as much as they wish it were otherwise, history may very well not be on our side. Because this sense is hardly alien to most conservatives — as it is to most leftists — the prevailing mood among some, at least in the short term, is sorrow, not anger.
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