Jay Newton-Small reports on the food fight between the White House and Nancy Pelosi two posts below. What’s really happening here is some classic politics that Pelosi, surprisingly, doesn’t seem to understand. There is no down side to Gibbs’ poor-mouthing the Democrats’ chances of losing the House. If they do lose, it’s an old story–saw it coming, bad economy, anti-incumbent sentiment, traditional for the President’s party to get whacked etc…But if they lose 30+ seats but retain the House, even by a 1-vote majority, it’s…a…triumph! We fought back! (They can say.) The pundits were wrong! (Even though Gibbs was the pundit.) The American people realized that the Republicans had no real policy alternatives! The Republicans are crestfallen, and forced to answer tough questions about why they didn’t win. It turbo-charges the President going into his re-election campaign.
This is politics 101.