Phantom Victories

John Podhoretz:

I’ve read some cracked political analysis in my time, but a story on the New York Times website this afternoon called “A Primary Victory Boosts White House, for Now”

may be the San Andreas Fault of cracked political analyses. It seems, according to the reporter Jeff Zeleny, that the White House is rejoicing today in the primary victory of Colorado Senate candidate (and sitting Senator by appointment) Michael Bennet over an insurgent Democrat named Andrew Romanoff:

President Obama and his White House on Wednesday were savoring one of their sweetest victories of the midterm election season, as Senator Michael Bennet’s triumph in the Colorado Democratic primary on Tuesday interrupted the political storyline that all incumbents are doomed by voter discontent.

The story goes on to say that Obama had invested his political capital in Bennet, that if Bennet had gone down it would have demonstrated his weakness, and so on.

I don’t know if the fault is the White House’s or Zeleny’s, but this is, quite simply, insane. The race in question was in a Democratic primary. The results tell us very little about the mood of the overall electorate in November, especially the mood among independent voters. And what little information there is to be gleaned from the results should actually be very worrying to Democrats, because in this contested primary, far fewer votes were cast for the two Democrats than for the two Republicans who went at it yesterday.

I remember reading this yesterday and wondering what the reporter was on at the time he wrote it. Bennet won with fewer votes than the failed Republican candidate got in that primary (183,521 for Bennet versus 197,143 for Norton).

If this is a bright spot for the Democrats, perhaps they are actually just seeing the glint off the arrowheads waiting for them in the valley.

The Democrats are in deep, deep trouble.

Get registered and get out and vote in November. Help get out the vote. Talk to your friends and relatives.