Taranto gets some jollies at the Left’s legislative morass:

The White House is “bracing for the defeat of President Obama’s jobs bill,” the Hill reports. That’s hardly surprising, since Republicans control the House–except that it is the Senate, where Democrats hold a majority, that is expected to vote down the $447 billion Stimulus Jr. plan.

Unnamed White House officials “emphasized their view that it is Republicans who are holding up the . . . plan, and they downplayed Democratic defections,” the report adds. “And officials warned that Republican presidential candidates who follow the lead of Congress . . . will be painted with the same brush as a GOP Congress that voted against the jobs bill at a critical time.”

Run for your lives, Republicans! Obama’s got a brush!

RTWT. Taranto mocks some sundry Administration-defending suspects, then turns to Hot Air’s “Green Room” demi-star Howard Portnoy’s observation to set up a pertinent point:

Portnoy observes: “What I believe is happening is that the left is reading the handwriting on the wall and resigning itself to the harsh reality [that] the man they trusted to ‘fundamentally transform America’ is on the verge of being unelected.”

We’d go a step further. Not only does Obama’s re-election look to be in serious jeopardy, but his presidency has been an almost unmitigated disaster for progressive liberalism, nearly every tenet of which has been revealed to be untenable either practically, politically or both.

Taranto’s riff dove-tails nicely (for my purposes) with this NRO piece: The Eternal Heartbreak of the American Left:

If 99 percent of the population is so strongly on board with their message, then they sure are keeping quiet about it. A range of popular excuses for why this is the case are forthcoming — the overwhelming favorite being that people are staying away through fear of losing their jobs. But this prompts the obvious counter-question: What of the 14 million unemployed? They should form a natural constituency, so where are they? At this inquiry, various social theories are proffered, most of them unintelligible. I have a modest offering in lieu: Like the lover who frustratingly finds his affection unrequited, there is rarely a simpler explanation than a good old fashioned, “I don’t love you.” Americans aren’t really interested.

This is unsurprising. During the 1968 Democratic primary, anti-war students and counterculture types who wanted to be taken seriously when campaigning for Eugene McCarthy shaved off their beards and put on suits. They changed their language, contrived to smile, and learned some hard facts to go along with their indignation. The architects of the “Get clean for Gene” approach understood something important — the hippie vibe scares most of the country and deafens them to its advocates’ message.

Ah, yes, 1968; the Year of the last Lefty “Let’s Throw a Shit-Storm Hissy Fit.” As I earlier observed, the Occupy Wall Street Stupid Fucking Hippies are being led like lambs to the slaughter in a desperate attempt by the Institutionalized Left to regain their mythical, halcyon era’s political mojo….

For a group who fancies themselves to be the Reality-Based Community, they don’t know much about history; their 1968 “Day of Rage” antics led to the Democrats getting their asses handed to them by Tricky Dick… twice.

Hearing this brand of whine coming from the House Minority Whip certainly is not going to do anything to improve their chances:

House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer suggested Tuesday that voters are to blame for the partisan bickering and standoffs that have defined Congress this year.

The Maryland Democrat said voters are “absolutely right” to think that “Congress isn’t working very well.” But that dysfunction, he said, is largely of their own making.

“The American people have every right to be angry [and] disappointed by the performance of the Congress,” Hoyer told reporters in the Capitol. “Of course, the American people have also elected people with hard stances, so that to some degree the American people are realizing the results of their votes.

“If elections have consequences — which I think they do — some of those consequences are getting what you vote for,” Hoyer added. “In this case, many people voted for people who thought compromise was not something that they ought to participate in.”

Hey, Steny? The November 2010 elections were exactly about what you’re bitching about; the voters sent a clear message: “STOP BURNING OUR MONEY ON PIE-IN-THE-SKY BULLSHIT.”

Why, in His Noodly Goodness’s name, they think that, this time, the outcome will change is beyond my ken. If anything, this time around–with a highly motivated Tea Party* (instead of Nixon’s “Silent Majority”) waiting to take the field–the beatdown will be worse, with the Lefties left reeling for something like, at least, a dozen years before they have a chance to recover.

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