I don't know. I think that after a short period of shock, the Left will smoothly slide directly into "impeachment" mode. A few of them, including a lot of the leadership, haven't learned a damned thing in forty years, and I don't expect that to change.

This election is just the latest battle in a long war that dates from the late fifties, and reached a crescendo in Vietnam. It's a bit more nuanced than simple "left" vs. "right," but that's part of it. A lot of old Marxists ended up in the universities, and turned out the sixties crowd. A lot of the sixties crowd is now squatting in the media and running the Democratic Party (it sure as hell isn't the Democratic Farmer-Labor Party any more) and the Marxists are still in the universities.

That's an oversimplification, but the full picture would take a book. It would be easier if I had decent archetypes for this, but it's not as easy as Reagan vs. McGovern or anything like that. Maybe "Better Red than Dead" vs. "Better Dead than Red." The color isn't red any more, it's the green of radical Islamism, but the concept is the same.

One side believes in compromise with evil, with making deals, and hoping it will go away. This side believes that we are the problem, not the solution.

A touchstone for people like this: in any conflict, political, economic, or otherwise, between the United States and any other nation, no matter how corrupt or evil, these people will always assume America is in the wrong. This isn't synonymous with siding with the enemy, but the line gets pretty fuzzy. This viewpoint long precedes Bush, 9/11, or the war in Iraq. Go back through history, and remember.

The other side believes evil can be defeated, or at least confronted.

Everything going on now with Iraq was played out almost word-for-word during Reagan's administration and the Cold War. Same principles, same two sides.