[link|http://www.americanprowler.com/article.asp?art_id=2003_10_9_23_35_57|Blame lincoln for inspring my schadenfreude on this topic.]

Excerpt:

Gov. Gray Davis may not have been the biggest loser in the California recall. Some Democratic National Committee members are calling for DNC chairman Terry McAuliffe to explain his odd behavior in the days leading up to Tuesday's election debacle.

McAuliffe appeared on cable news channels and gave print interviews citing DNC internal polling data that showed the recall election too close to call. He also claimed that he had numbers indicating Democrats would emerge unscathed from the election. He also claimed that even if Arnold Schwarzenegger did win, he'd do so with fewer votes than Davis would receive from voters opposed to his recall in the first place. In fact, Schwarzenegger outpaced Davis by more than 100,000 votes.

"I don't know where the hell McAuliffe got his info, but he was treating it like sacred writ, and it was just trash," says a California Democratic Party official in Los Angeles. "I know he likes to blow a lot of sunshine up peoples' behinds, but this was just embarrassing for us."

I say:

You mean it's not embarrassing all the other times?

Ah, so Democrat partisans *can* be embarrassed. It just takes a lot. And it's a cumulative effect. Guess this latest was the last straw for this particular official.

Excerpt:

McAuliffe's misdirection -- and this is putting it kindly -- was even more egregious when you consider that on Monday night, Davis advisers showed their boss tracking poll data that indicated the Republican frontrunner had actually widened his lead over Davis in the previous 48 hours.

"Davis knew he was dead on Monday night," says a Democratic operative in Sacramento. "By Tuesday morning, this was all about trying to put a dignified face on defeat."

I say:

Just like the partisans and the press are doing with Iraq, only exactly the opposite. In that case, they're trying to put a fright mask on victory.

It's still California, though. Physique aside, Arnie is a lightweight, and only Californians would be shallow enough to choose him. But it's less stupid than the last two elections, when they went with that klepto Shades-of-Gray Davis.