Stupid is the New Smart

I am struggling with competing desires to not jinx things but to also say something smart before everyone else does. The latter is winning out...

I have always resisted the notion that Karl Rove is some evil genius (evil, yes..). After all, this is the same man who sent his candidate, George W. Bush, into the bluest of blue states, California and New York, the weekend before the 2000 election to con the press into thinking that the Bush people were so confident that they could afford to expand the playing field. Polls before the election showed Bush with a 2 to 5 point lead, and, as we know, he ended up loosing the popular vote. Katherine Harris would still be handing out drivers' licenses if it weren't for Hot Karl's brilliance.

I am sure that the media will play up the "if it weren't for Rove, the losses would have been greater", but it seems to me that, if the Democrats have a good night on Tuesday, Rove is at least partly the one to thank. Rove built the entire republican mid-term campaign strategy around the phrase of "stay the course". That hardly seems like the work of genius when only 29% approve of the course that we are staying on...

Stay the course has become a national punch line and one of the Democrats most reliable weapons with which to bludgeon their opponents. If Karl is still around in 2 years, maybe we can even take the White House.

Ok - back to your regularly scheduled pessimism...