With this much love for fellow Americans, why do they lose?(Scan)

For the benefit of future historians--and today's psychotherapists--we've put together a handy condensation of reactions to our latest election results from the left side of the political spectrum (home of tolerance and reason, remember?):

Film producer Beverly Camhe clutched a large latte and talked about how disconsolate she was to realize that she and her city were so out of step with the rest of the country. "Do you know how I described New York to my European friends?" she said. "New York is an island off the coast of Europe."

"I'm saddened by the obtuseness and shortsightedness of a good part of the country--the heartland," Dr. Joseph Zito, a 63-year-old retired psychiatrist, said. "This kind of redneck, shoot-from-the-hip mentality and a very concrete interpretation of religion is prevalent in Bush country. New Yorkers are more sophisticated and at a level of consciousness where we realize we have to think of globalization, of one mankind."

His friend Roberta Cohn, a native of Wisconsin who deals in art, contended that "New Yorkers are savvy, we have street smarts. Whereas people in the Midwest are more influenced by what their friends say. They're very 1950s. When I go back there, I feel I'm in a time warp."

"When you're in a more isolated environment, you're more susceptible to some ideology that's imposed on you. We live in this marvelous diversity where we actually have gay neighbors," said Ms. Camhe. "If the heartland feels so alienated from us, then it behooves us to wrap our arms around the heartland. We need to bring our way of life, which is honoring diversity and having compassion for people with different lifestyles, on a trip around the country."

--from "A Blue City Bewildered by a Red America," New York Times, 11/04/04

"It seems like the rest of the country is pretty angry at us for some reason," Mike Kelleher of Brockton, Massachusetts said with a sigh. "I just don't get it."