Why is the left still so angry?

A reader from Rockville described it as a “sore winner” phenomenon. “People get used to being angry and when things change, they don’t. So they find stuff to be mad about.” Another said that some on the left “feel obligated to stay in the fight” because of the harsh treatment of Obama by the right.

But many focused on a frustration on the left caused by Obama’s centrism — his opposition to prosecuting those involved with torture, for example. “I am angry because the whole Republican party has not been rounded up and thrown into a black site,” one wrote. A reader in Evanston, Ill., took a similar view, that true believers on the left don’t want “b.s. rhetoric about looking forward.” Okay, but why wouldn’t this be directed at Obama? Readers explained that some of it is. But, “if we yell obscenities at Obama,” replied a reader in Dunnellon, Fla., “we get a visit from the Secret Service. Yelling them at you is worry-free.”