Patrick Manning had ridiculed how she pronounced "nation". That was during the 2010 election campaign when, first, sceptically curious, and later, wildly alarmist, attention was being paid to the risen star that was Kamla Persad-Bissessar.

She had won the victrix ludorum sash in an Olympian contest, deposing the supposedly immovable champion, Basdeo Panday. His influence as an opinion shaper yet outlived his stature as a hero leader.

The contemptuous disregard in which he held her prospects allowed him to vacation abroad while she worked the fields over Christmas 2009. Until the January 24 election result, her exertions appeared as undervalued and as unavailing as women's work.

Patrick Manning shared that assessment of her potential. Weighing the outcome of the big play the fates were impelling him to make, he must have been reassured by the Panday prognosis that her "weakness" would prove politically fatal.

Kamla Persad-Bissessar, a known quantity from the years of his own pre-eminence, looked as politically unprepossessing as ever. Ambitious leader of a brand-new formation, she had to be giving herself wannabe airs, or accepting flattery.

He mimicked her pronunciation of "nation" to sound like "nigh-shun", imputing adoption of an accent from the US advisers retained to coach the unlearned and unready challenger. Marlene McDonald lampooned "Kamla's" wearing of Michelle Obama-style cardigans. Paula Gopee-Scoon, another Manning Minister, suggested the People's Partnership leader should stick to local issues, since Caricom matters were "beyond her".

As the shape of electoral things to come eventually clarified itself, characterisations by other PNM women became more lurid. They called her "vampire" and "La Diablesse".

By then, however, she had experienced both the political manhandling and the victim-blaming disdain of political women. The Kamla Persad-Bissessar finally elevated to Prime Minister had become used to being ill-used.

The experience, which thickened her skin, could not, however, be counted on to have much other improving effect on political or governmental capabilities.  It was performance in government, however, that was being celebrated at Rienzi Complex on Tuesday evening, in defiance of all the bad-mouthing and the doom saying for the Persad-Bissessar administration.

 Watching it on TV, I dozed off and awoke guiltily to view the firework display. I had failed to stay awake during the Prime Minister's address. Going on long, she proved to be no oratress capable of anything such as we have known, say, in Basdeo Panday.

I have been able to sleep it off. But a self-identifying caucus of people, who had also voted for her, remain restless and resentful that the administration led by Ms Persad-Bissessar comprehensively disappoints their expectations.

Such people, now associated with the most searing of criticism, are themselves more interesting for the phenomenon they represent than the people and the government they target. Among those now singing the political blues are people unable to forgive themselves for having elected this Government.

That explains the self-flagellating flavour of the outpourings. Hardly anyone now venting unhappiness openly admits to error in not having reaffirmed the Manning PNM. Today's disappointment is based on a weirdly helpless sense that we the people should have been able to do better than to elect the People's Partnership.

The blunt choices had been Anything But Manning or Nothing But Manning. The People's Partnership had been nailed together only weeks before. Weeks before that, the UNC, its main component, had discarded its old leadership, reaching consciously for the uncertainties of renewal.

 As the election bell rang, relative to hopes for a formation eminently fit and ready to do better than Manning's, there was nothing. The People's Partnership was the only show in town.

 "I had hoped to see a fearless executive working tirelessly to appoint only suitably qualified people," said one letter writer last week. His "I had hoped" is a refrain of the times. Somebody else must now take the blame for the fact that he had entertained such hope.

In the prevailing bad mood, restraint has been abandoned. Without reference to context or history, commentators reach automatically for categorisations such as "the worst" and "the most".

Michael Harris, a Tapia colleague from the 1970s, writes today in a language of almost doctrinal certainty, made up only of superlatives and absolutes.

 "At its very core," he says of the Government, "is a vector of corruption and iniquity, a virulence that is attacking the country's immune system". This Mr Harris asserts to be a "truth" as universally acknowledged as "God is love". Equating the People's Partnership to the HIV virus requires for him neither citation of evidence nor reference to recognisable reality.

Language like that in columns and in blogs recalls a summation of contemporary trends by Paul Krugman, American Nobel laureate economist and columnist. He called it "our fact-free postmodern politics".

In style and content, the inescapable blog has become a version of what my late mother used to call creole "blag". By that, she meant old talk, not necessarily informed by fact but well seasoned with malice.

How else to take the assassinating flavour of the personalised attack on Ms Persad-Bissessar: that even her "hygiene" needs correction; that she is unfit to rule?

Then who? For today, the Manning option appears no longer available.