The Party of Gaknar

I'll admit it: reports of Rove's optimism have me spooked. I can't help it. I'm a Democrat; I expect the worst.

Which is I'm so glad to see Josh Marshall provide a little perspective:

Why is Karl Rove so confident? What does he know that the Dems and the pundit-predictors don't?

The answer is really, really simple: nothing. There's not anything he knows. In fact, he's not even confident. It's a bluff.

Marshall goes on to tell a story from 2000 that illustrates what Rove is trying to do now:

Conventional logic would have dictated sending Bush to swing states like Florida....[Rove] chose instead to send Bush to California and New Jersey -- states Bush could only have any hope of winning in a blow-out....Rove figured that he could accomplish more through convincing mainly the press, but also activists and even highly-plugged voters, that Bush was going to win big than he would by sending his guy into a state like Florida for some last minute retail politicking.

It's the bandwagon effect. Psyche out the other side. Act like you're winning and you'll charge up your activists/voters and demoralize the folks on the other side. Mainly, get the press to believe your hype and they'll do the charging up and demoralizing for you. As it happened, it was a really dumb decision in 2000. If not for faulty ballots and election stealing, Bush would have lost Florida and the presidency.

We have nothing to fear but fear itself. Literally. Fear is all they have.

The big kind of fear--the fear that triggers latent authoritarianism--we can fight only in limited ways. The other kind of fear, though--the demoralizing fear Rove seeks to induce in us--is entirely within our control. As the election approaches, we need to keep in mind Marshall's admonition...or better yet, just remember two words:

Actual size.

[That's all, folks]