WINNERS, WHINERS, AND LOSERS. Margaret at University Diaries offers some thoughts about the simultaneous happiness of what she refers to as a "blue plutocracy" and the sadness of those same elites' narcissistic neuroses. It's an interesting compare-and-contrast, but not a complete explanation of establishment Democrats' malaise. Although the famous university towns and the ghettos of the entertainment industry famously tend Democratic, the most reliably Democratic precincts tend to be a bit thin on latte shops and pshrinks. Dane 101 has the evidence.

A new study has been released ranking the top liberal cities in the country. Where do you think Madison falls? In the top 10? Nope. Top 20? No. Top 30? Nada. The city that local liberals like to pretend is as left as Berkeley doesn't even clock in until number 34.

The study perhaps conflates "voting Democratic" with "tending liberal" (in the sense of Franklin Roosevelt to Lyndon Johnson?) There is, however, the possibility that high-status voters and middling-status white voters are less prone to vote against their own interests than the remaining residents of Detroit and Gary, coming in at 1 and 2 in the study, rendered unemployable by the minimum wage and weak schools, which Republican strategists have rightly or not pinned on the Democrats, and isolated by zoning codes. Some Madisonians are coming to grips with that possibility, as well as with their excessive comfort with their own prejudices, in this forum.