"Why does the term 'circular firing squad' seem to pop up after every Democratic defeat?" wrote columnist E.J. Dionne. "Those Democrats whose mistakes led to this fiasco know who they are. If they don't take responsibility and instead just try to shift all the blame to someone else, they will prove themselves unprepared for the work they now have to do to get their party out of this hole."But columnist Eugene Robinson disagreed with "overheated commentary that this was the end of the world." Robinson wrote: "From the Democratic Party's point of view, losing the Senate supermajority can't be construed as a net positive. But being left with an 18-vote majority isn't usually the sort of thing that throws a party into abject despair."