A friend e-mails about this Washington Post article:

I don’t know if this is the same headline that’s online, but the lead headline in today’s Washington Post reads: “Elections Are Crux Of GOP’s Strategy.” Now I have a couple responses to that…First, duh, isn’t it obvious that winning elctions is the primary, if not sole, goal of any political party. But second, reading the headline as pointing out somthing newsworthy, then perhaps this headline deomstrates just how lost the liberal Democrats are. After all, reading the headline with that sense, then can we infer the same isn’t true for Democrats such that “Elections Are [NOT] Crux of Denocrats’ Strategy”? Empirically, this reading seems to be borne out since the Democrats have proven over and over again that the crux of their strategy isn’t to win elections.

Uh huh. Exactly. Also, it’s always fun to point and laugh.

Jim: Marshall, I won’t go into the whole thing, but there’s a section in the forthcoming book that lists all the ways that various Democrats insisted that 2004 was really a win for them. Their far-fetched justifications, excuses, and big-big-picture-scenarios suggest that, at least for some, maybe Democrats don’t go into every year aiming to win elections.