"Trump Keeps Talking. Some Republicans Don’t Like What They’re Hearing/Aides and allies increasingly believe the president’s daily briefings are hurting him more than helping, and are urging him to let his medical experts take center stage."

A NYT headline for an article by Jonathan Martin and Maggie Haberman. I don't believe they're at all interested in helping Trump politically.

I was just listening to a few minutes of "Morning Joe" as I was driving over to see the sunrise this morning. They had the same topic and were flatly opining that Trump was hurting himself by talking too much at the briefings. They warned him that Biden would be able to pick over his voluminous remarks and find damaging things to quote.

At the time, I thought, well, that must be the most damaging thing they've got against him today — that he's on camera talking too much — or it's the other way around and Trump's appearances are helping him and they want him to stop.

Here are the quotes in the NYT in support of that headline:

Mr. Trump “sometimes drowns out his own message,” said Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who has become one of the president’s informal counselors and told him “a once-a-week show” could be more effective. Representative Susan Brooks of Indiana said “they’re going on too long.” Senator Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia said the briefings were “going off the rails a little bit” and suggested that he should “let the health professionals guide where we’re going to go.”

That's far from harsh criticism. Of course, the briefings go on a long time. Trump and the force stand there taking questions as long as the reporters keep asking. Why not tell the reporters to stop talking so much? They can't complain that he won't answer questions. I don't know why, but I've been watching the show. I don't watch TV news. Can't stand the news on TV. But I watch the coronavirus briefing every day. It has high ratings, and I can see why.

The NYT looks for the Democratic Party candidate who "matches the moment," tells us what this "moment" is, and nudges the non-moment-matching would-bes to stay out of the way.

"It is hard to recall a recent presidential primary where, at the outset of the race, there was this much genuine mystery — not only about who would eventually emerge as the nominee, but who planned to run at all," write Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns in "2020 Democratic Presidential Candidates Are Lining Up. Who Matches the Moment?" (NYT):

Ms. Warren’s announcement Monday was expected. And it will not be a surprise when Senators Cory Booker of New Jersey and Kamala Harris of California enter the race in the coming weeks. But the number of would-be candidates who may ultimately stay out of the race is larger than the list of contenders who are certain to run.

There are the well-known, or at least much-buzzed-about, Democrats who are still deliberating: Former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. is the most prominent of this group, and leads the field in initial polling in Iowa. But there is also great anticipation over Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, the runner-up for the Democratic nomination in 2016, and Representative Beto O’Rourke of Texas, whose losing Senate bid this year electrified many grass-roots Democrats.

It is unclear if any of these men will enter the race — particularly Mr. Biden, who, associates say, is ambivalent about running after over three decades of presidential fits and starts.

It's a subtle pushback to the Bernie-Beto-Biden triad, but it is — as I see it — another NYT pushback to the 3 white men who ought to know better than to clutter the path of The Foursome. And we can see who the expendable member of The Foursome is, because they've left her name out of this article altogether.

Martin and Burns home in on Warren, who just announced she's in the running. She's early, but she's late:

Would she be the president today if she had run in 2016, as some liberal activists and admirers urged her to? Mr. Sanders ended up filling the void on the populist left and ran a surprisingly strong campaign against Hillary Clinton....

[T]he more recent history of presidential calculations suggests that candidates are wiser to run when the moment presents itself. That is what Mr. Obama did in 2008 after just four years in the Senate, the same period Ms. Warren would have served by 2016. Some Democrats think 2020 is Mr. O’Rourke’s moment: He has been in the House for just six years, but many liberals see his energy and freshness as inspiring.

One reason Ms. Warren announced on Monday and declared so early, her allies suggested, was to erase any uncertainty about her intentions among supporters whom she kept waiting — and ultimately disappointed — in 2016....

Timing is also crucial in presidential races because the issues can change so quickly. Mr. Trump’s incendiary rhetoric and policies around race and immigration have shifted the political conversation away from matters of economic inequality, which has been the life’s work of Ms. Warren and which defined much of the 2016 Democratic primary.

I think the reason why the NYT didn't mention the fourth member of The Foursome (Kirsten Gillibrand) was because they had to focus on Warren, given her announcement, and there's this idea that the "political conversation" has shifted from class consciousness to race consciousness. It's not a white-person "moment" anymore. "Who Matches the Moment?" says the headline, and the "moment" is, apparently, what Trump made it, with his "incendiary rhetoric and policies around race and immigration."

So Warren had her time, 2016, and she missed it, and let's not even mention that other white woman — or get derailed into the icky inquiry whether Warren is white — because the path needs clearing. Who knows how much white-person clutter could fall on the path the NYT would like to clear for — let's be honest — Kamala Harris?

The NYT is trying to be somewhat subtle, but it seems so obvious to me.

By the way, whatever happened to the rise of women, and why isn't the "moment" about #MeToo, which would vault Kirsten Gillibrand to the front?

Shattering the already fragile architecture of the Democratic Party...

This NYT article by Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns — "As Trump Consolidates Power, Democrats Confront a Rebellion in Their Ranks" — begins with a very big mouthful of a sentence:

The pitched battle looming over the Supreme Court, along with a jolt to the Democratic leadership at the ballot box last Tuesday, is threatening to shatter the already fragile architecture of the Democratic Party, as an activist rebellion on the left and a lurch to the right in Washington propels the party toward a moment of extraordinary conflict and forced reinvention.

This is why I have the tag "Democratic Party in Trumpland."

My main question would be: Is the Democratic Party capable of reinvention? It can only be "forced" to try to reinvent itself. What's it supposed to do? It could crumble apart and die or shrivel into impotence.

More of the article:

And as the Democratic National Committee moves to eliminate superdelegates — the elected officials and party elites who help determine presidential nominees — there is widespread expectation that traditional power brokers should cede more authority to the activists on social media, often millennials and people of color, who are increasingly steering the party’s agenda....

The turmoil on the left mirrors that of Republicans in the first two years of Mr. Obama’s administration, when Democrats controlled all the levers of government and left the Tea Party-inflected Republican Party to thrash around in impotent protest, raging with an energy that eventually propelled it back to power....

Tea-Party-inflected, not Tea-Party-infected. Mustn't refer to people as disease. Add the "l" and speak of them in terms of a vocal intonation expressing a change of mood.

I read the whole article in the hope of answering my question, but I really didn't find anything I could quote on the subject. Really, that first sentence, despite its crazy length, pithily sums up everything the authors can find to say.

After Ossoff.

1. Trump revels: "Well, the Special Elections are over and those that want to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN are 5 and O! All the Fake News, all the money spent = 0."

2. Cruder gloating from Kellyanne Conway: "Laughing my #Ossoff." "Thanks to everyone who breathlessly and snarkily proclaimed #GA06 as a "referendum on POTUS @realDonaldTrump"/You were right/#winning."

3. A WaPo column (by Paul Kane) rationalizes: "Ossoff chose civility and it didn’t work": "So Ossoff chose the high priest route instead of the fierce warrior. It was civil disobedience rather than civil unrest. And he still lost, by an even wider margin than the almost forgotten Parnell."

4. A Daily Beast columnist (Patricia Murphy): "Jon Ossoff's $23 Million Loss Shows Dems Have No Idea How to Win in the Age of Trump."

5. Another WaPo column (by Aaron Blake): The Democrats "had nine weeks after the primary to get from 49 percent of the vote that day to 50 percent-plus-one on Tuesday, and they didn't do it. For a party still smarting from somehow losing a 2016 presidential race that was well within their grasp, they have to feel the need to do some soul-searching and figure out why their strategies aren't resulting in actual wins. Commence bloodletting."

6. Matt Yglesias at Vox: "Jon Ossoff’s Georgia special election loss shows Democrats could use a substantive agenda."

Karen Handel didn’t argue that the Republican Party’s health care bill is a good idea (it’s very unpopular) or that tax cuts for millionaires should be the country’s top economic priority (another policy that polls dismally). Instead, her campaign and its allies buried Ossoff under a pile of what basically amounts to nonsense — stuff about Kathy Griffin, stuff about Samuel L. Jackson, stuff about his home being just over the district line, stuff about him having raised money from out of state — lumped together under the broad heading that he’s an “outsider.”...

Ossoff’s team... attempted to counter this move by positioning Ossoff as blandly as possible — just a kind of nice guy who doesn’t like Donald Trump — and dissociating him from any hard-edged ideas or themes....

7. Alexander Burns and Jonathan Martin in the NYT: "Democrats Seethe After Georgia Loss: ‘Our Brand Is Worse Than Trump.'"

[A] half-dozen Democratic elected officials and operatives privately vented in text messages and phone calls about a dispiriting trend emerging in this year’s special elections: When their candidates appear to gain traction in the polls, Republicans can easily halt the momentum by invoking Ms. Pelosi....

[P]opulist forces on the left took Mr. Ossoff’s defeat as an occasion to criticize the whole notion of centrism as a Democratic strategy. Jim Dean, the chairman of Democracy for America, a liberal activist group, blasted Mr. Ossoff overnight for “lighting millions of dollars on fire” and delivering an “uninspiring message” that he predicted would fail again in 2018. “The same, tired centrist Democratic playbook that has come up short cycle after cycle will not suffice,” Mr. Dean said in a statement.

A phrase that shocked me — "downscale white guys" — spoken by Ruth Marcus of The Washington Post.

I am used to class politics and racial politics. I have 181 and 993 blog posts with these tags. I read elite media every day and watch the Sunday shows — often all 5 — nearly every week. I notice and focus on language in my writing here. It's what I do. When something jumps out at me as different — not the way they normally talk — it means something. I think: Whoa! That must be the way they talk behind the scenes. The mask slipped.

Yesterday, on "Face the Nation," John Dickerson was moderating a panel discussion. He'd asked Ruth Marcus about Donald Trump's efforts to reach out to Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan in the interest of party unity. Marcus said "some Republicans" were "getting to yes with Donald Trump" but a lot were "getting to OMG with Donald Trump."

There was some talk about GOP leaders plotting a 3rd party move or "piggybacking" on the ballot access of the Libertarian or Constitution Party. But even if that worked to keep Trump from winning the presidency, where would it leave the Republican Party going forward? Reihan Salam (of The National Review) observed that younger voters — 18-29-year-old voters — leaned toward Bernie Sanders, and:

The Republican Party needs to think around the bend. Donald Trump is - he's energized a lot of voters who are, frankly, not going to be the voters of the future.

"Frankly" = These people are old and therefore on their way off Planet Earth (if not quite soon enough to stop Trump).

Susan Page (of USA Today) revealed that the Republicans who are talking to her (off the record) assume they're going to lose the presidential election, and they're just trying to figure out "a way to lose the presidency but hold the Senate" or — at least — "lose the White House and the Senate but not have the party destroyed." With that as the goal, they can't agree on "whether Ted Cruz or Donald Trump is the smarter bet."

John Dickerson said he'd talked to Lindsey Graham about that and "the gap between what they say privately and what they're willing to do [in] public... is vast." Two other panelists — Page and Jonathan Martin (of the NYT) — back Dickerson up. The GOP leaders don't want to endorse Cruz. Martin says:

[I]'s hard for these folks in the party to get behind Ted Cruz. Mitt Romney and Lindsey Graham are trying to make it easier, but it's - it's still very difficult.... But this is - this is - the state of the GOP in March of 2016 is, we have to lose with Cruz, it's important. That's astonishing, right, that they are trying to save their party by nominating somebody that they assume will lose the presidency.

This idea that Cruz is the preferable loser triggers Ruth Marcus. She thinks Trump would be "a less strong candidate against Hillary Clinton than Ted Cruz," but then she says "the Clinton campaign is quite nervous about the prospect of running against Donald Trump." Now, that seems contradictory, but it makes sense if you think that both Cruz and Trump will lose to Hillary, but Trump will be a much more unpleasant opponent for her.

Dickerson prods Marcus to explain:

DICKERSON: Because why?

MARCUS: Because who knows.

MARTIN: The unknowns. Yes.

MARCUS: Be - because the rustbelt. Because all those down scale white guys, who knows what - you know with Ted Cruz sort of where he's going and what he's going to say. You don't know that with Donald Trump and you don't know what voters he can energize.

The adjective "downscale" along with "white" and the too-casual "guys" felt so contemptuous to me. And that comes right after the inarticulate "be- because the rustbelt." So disrespectful, so revealing of waves of loathing roiling underneath. These people who should be dead already might get "energized" by Trump. He's the trumpet that blows on Judgment Day and wakes the dead. Could they just please remain in a state of suspended animation until they have the dignity to disappear? That's what I'm hearing in "all those down scale white guys." She's saying: Don't they know they're not needed anymore... how ridiculous they look heaving themselves up off their death beds and dancing to Trump's tune?

I didn't think I'd ever heard the adjective "downscale" to refer to a human being. It seems like something you'd say about a shopping mall or a neighborhood (if you were talking about a place where other people go). I searched the NYT archive to reinforce my impression, and it mostly did. But I found this July 2013 column by Paul Krugman, "Whites and the Safety Net" that used "downscale" to refer to human beings — white human beings — 3 times:

But if there really is a missing-white-voter issue — and I’d like to see some more analysis by serious political scientists before I completely buy in — what will it take to bring these people back out to play? Sean Trende, who has been making the missing-whites case, describes the missing as “downscale, rural, Northern whites”. What can the GOP offer them?

Wow! We know the answer in 2016. The GOP could offer Donald Trump. Krugman continues:

Well, the trendy answer now is “libertarian populism” — but the question is what that means. And for a lot of Republicans, as Mike Konczal notes, it seems to mean lower tax rates on the wealthy, tight money, and deregulation. And this is supposed to appeal to downscale whites because, um, because.

There's that "because" tic we saw in Ruth Marcus.

Krugman, of course, thinks the GOP really has nothing for these people. He doesn't buy the GOP's supply-side economics and doesn't think it has any power to win over anyone who's not already a believer. And what's worse for the GOP is that their attacks on safety-net programs threaten the downscale white people:

[N]ews flash: these programs don’t just benefit Those People; they’re also very important to downscale whites, the very people that will supposedly rescue the GOP.

There's the theory. "Downscale white guys" — or "downscale whites" if you're in print — are on the dole. They should belong to the Democrats, who empathize with the vulnerable. The GOP wanted them, but only if they bought an agenda that made no direct appeal to them. And the billionaire saw them and spoke to them: We don't win anymore! And they came alive. 

Donald Trump hits "a new high," nationally — 41%.

That's more than twice as much as his nearest competitor Ted Cruz, who gets 19%, in CNN's new poll. What's most impressive is how stable the numbers are. In CNN's last poll, in late December, Trump had 39% and Cruz 18%. A more negative stability is seen in Rubio's numbers. He had 10% then but only 8% now.

Trump leads "among both men and women, younger and older voters, white evangelicals, conservatives and both self-identified Republicans and independents who lean toward the party." He even leads among college graduates — with 26% (20% for Cruz) — and  tea partiers — with 37% (34% for Cruz). And Trump's supporters are, by far, least likely to change their minds: "70% of Trump's supporters say they are locked in compared with 40% who back other candidates."

Isn't it obvious that Trump will get the nomination? Nothing works on him. You especially can't hope that maybe he'll say something horrible. He's shown time and again that he can say things media people think are fatal gaffes and nothing happens. Nothing bad for him, that is. Many people love the supposedly horrible things.

Trump's case for the presidency rests at least in part on his standing as a political outsider. The poll finds that a broad swath of GOP voters (55%) say they feel completely unrepresented by the government in Washington, and among those voters, Trump holds a 47% to 19% lead over Cruz.

ADDED: The very next thing I looked at —  the front page of the NYT — had: "As Trump and Cruz Soar, G.O.P. Leaders’ Vexation Grows." I laughed out loud. "Vexation" is a funny word. I'm vexed — vexed! — I tell you! Seems like something a movie villain would say. I picture George Will. Look at him here, squirming — squirmishing — as he claims the "New York values" attack is hurting Trump:



The NYT article, if you click in from the front page, is: "As Donald Trump and Ted Cruz Soar, G.O.P. Leaders’ Exasperation Grows." I have no idea why "vexation" seemed like the right word for the front page and delighters in vexation like me got bait-and-switched into mere "exasperation." First paragraph:

Republican leaders are growing alarmed by the ferocious ways the party’s mainstream candidates for president are attacking one another, and they fear that time is running out for any of them to emerge as a credible alternative to Donald J. Trump or Senator Ted Cruz of Texas.

Leaders of the Republican establishment, made up of elected officials, lobbyists and donors, are also sending a message to the mainstream candidates, such as former Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida, that they should withdraw from the race if they do not show strength soon.

Soon?! It was apparent last October that Bush should withdraw and back Rubio. I wrote on October 29th:

And now, it's really too late for Jeb Bush.

On October 22, I said "It's time for Jeb Bush to withdraw and endorse Marco Rubio"... and now, after last night, it's too late even for that.... And so ends the sad tale of Jeb Bush, the man with cooler things to do than to help the man with the best hope of returning the Presidency to his party.

It's 3 months after I wrote that, and the Republican establishment is "growing alarmed" that it might be getting too late for a mainstreamer to emerge?! They're still waiting to see if Jeb might show some strength? His weakness has been one of Donald Trump's main jokes since last summer. What fool would hold out hope for something different to happen "soon"? But why not pretend there's hope? Why be realistic when there's nothing to be done?

AND: Just about the next thing I look at is David Brooks proving my point. Last lines of his new column "Stay Sane America, Please!":

In every recent presidential election American voters have selected the candidate with the most secure pair of hands. They’ve elected the person who would be a stable presence and companion for the next four years. I believe they’re going to do that again. And if they’re not, please allow me a few more months of denial. 

Sleep well.

The NYT plies Chris Christie with its guilt-trip theory and gets results.

The article, by Jonathan Martin, is "In New Hampshire, Jeb Bush and Chris Christie Add Guilt Trips to Campaign Stops":

"Are you trying to imply that an Italian from New Jersey would use guilt?... I think what I’m saying to them is, it would be a shame for the country if New Hampshire makes the wrong choices. Guilt was a frequently used weapon of my mother. So some of it just comes out naturally."

But Mr. Christie did not deny that he was in effect telling New Hampshire voters not to send their reputation for discriminating tastes in candidates down the drain.

“Yeah, that’s exactly what I’m saying,” he said, again invoking how much the “country is counting on them” and noting their “huge responsibility.”

The article cites Christie and Jeb, but it's Christie who's providing the material:

There are differences in the subtle shaming Mr. Bush and Mr. Christie employ. Mr. Bush is far more explicit about targeting Mr. Trump, while Mr. Christie, who would like to win some Trump voters, tends not to mention him directly. (“I’m not as judgmental about it as Jeb is,” Mr. Christie said.)

Well, you're judgmental about Jeb, calling him judgmental. As for this idea of shaming people into voting for you, I predict that, like everything else used against Trump, it will backfire. It's such a beta game.  You're supposed to pick Jeb or Christie because it's shameful or embarrassing to be for Trump. If only the ballot weren't secret, they might have a shot with that.

"A Political Lifer, Scott Walker Has Long Been His Own Strategist."

A NYT article by Jonathan Martin. Excerpt:

Mr. Walker’s hands-on approach to his political operation in Wisconsin bordered on the obsessive.... Mr. Walker’s strategic talents can be an asset...  It was Mr. Walker who came up with the best-of-both-worlds formulation he has recently woven into his stump speech — that his hard-charging Senate opponents are “fighters,” and his rival governors who have won difficult elections are “winners,” but he is the rare breed who has done both.

Did the Democrats give up on class warfare?

Jonathan Martin (at Politico) says they did. He notes that Occupy Wall Street has evanesced and that Obama conspicuously avoided participating in the Wisconsin recall election.

Labor unions hoped to turn the Wisconsin recall election into a rallying cause for their ailing movement. But a Democratic president couldn’t be dragged off the sidelines for the fight.

And let me add that even the Democratic candidate in that election avoided talking about labor union matters. Tom Barrett talked — with stunning blandness — about a restoration of civility and working together.

When you get a few paragraphs into the long article, you'll see it's mostly complaints about the dynamics of campaign finance with lots of quotes from people Martin counts among the few "unapologetic populists" left in the party. But there's this nice summary:

"Why publish the story then when you couldn't answer the essential question: What precisely is Herman Cain alleged to have done to these women?"

Howard Kurtz asks Politico's Jonathan Martin. Martin flails desperately, and Kurtz keeps going after him.

MR. KURTZ: I think at a lot of news organizations an editor would have said... you don't have the details of the sexually suggestive behavior that made them angry. Go back and get more. You could have waited, there was nothing forcing you to publish this last Sunday.

Martin blabbers. Kurtz makes him suffer. Watch the video at the link.

Meanwhile, on "Meet the Press," David Gregory had a chance to interrogate Maggie Haberman, whom he identifed as "Politico's reporter covering the Cain story." Gregory asked her absolutely nothing about Politico's behavior. He put up a quote from Cain, saying he'd like to leave the story behind and "get back on message," and asks her "So how does he really do that when there are more questions, which are primarily what?"

MS. MAGGIE HABERMAN: Well, I think among the questions are does he remember the second woman who we reported on? He says he has no memory of her whatsoever. Other media outlets have confirmed that there was another woman who had made some kind of complaint about sexually inappropriate behavior.

MR. GREGORY: Mm-hmm.

MS. HABERMAN: And Mr. Cain's campaign last night not only said they don't want to talk about this anymore, but they, you know, said they were going to email people the code of ethics from the Society of Professional Journalists, and did to one of my colleagues. I think this is where you're going to see the pivot. They are going to say the media is out to get him. I think that it has served them well this week.

MR. GREGORY: Mm-hmm.

MS. HABERMAN: I think that's how he's gotten around some conflicting answers about what's happened. I don't know that he's going to be able to not answer or at least not get asked them anymore, going forward.

At that point, Gregory moves on to another guest. That is, he lobbed Haberman a question that she was able to use to place the burden on Cain to come forward with the details, and Gregory asked nothing. Unless you consider "Mm-hmm" to be something. Haberman mentioned the code of ethics from the Society of Professional Journalists, but that did not rouse Mr. Gregory from his slumbers. Tim Russert would have grilled her. She needed grilling. Why have her on the show and not interrogate her?

Oh, no! It's men in trucks! Plowing in from Texas! Running down all the women! Rape!

"They’re sending people from Texas."

An attempt to scare some enthusiasm into Massachusetts voters.

And it's not just the fear of Texan outside agitators, there's a gender war a-comin':

At a Friday rally with former President Bill Clinton and again Saturday, Coakley ... raised the 4-wheel-drive factor, quipping that just because somebody drives a truck doesn’t meant they’re headed in the right direction.

That's a quip because Scott Brown drives a truck.

But Coakley, who despite a modest background carries herself with a patrician bearing...

Does she also bear herself with patrician carriage?

... has compounded the problem voters with a series of gaffes that suggest she’s out of touch, most recently on Friday when she appeared on a Boston talk radio show and seemed not to have heard of former star Red Sox star pitcher Curt Schilling.

Some Democrats worry that there is something deeper at work.

“I think it’s a man-woman thing,” said Robert Cullinane, a Teamsters local leader in the Boston area.

Teamsters!

Cullinane, speaking following the Clinton rally Friday, said some of his own members know that Brown opposes their agenda but are telling him, “'I’m not voting for that broad.’”

Those louts! Those unnamed louts that Cullinane — does he have patrician bearing? — must stoop to represent. Those brutes say "broad"... at least as paraphrased by the union leader who surely has their interests at heart.

“Unbelievable,” he said. “Here is someone who has voted against them on state issues yet they’re going to vote against ‘that broad.’”

"Here"? Where? Are you pointing at someone? Who is that horrible trucker?! Unbelievable!

Despite its liberal tradition, Massachusetts has never elected a female senator or governor.

OMG! Liberals might be sexists! Sound the liberal alarm! Liberals, prove you are liberal by voting for a woman!

See how that article — by Jonathan Martin in Politico — tried to flip you? First, nonentities were presented as prejudiced against a woman, ready to vote against Coakley because she's a woman, and then, suddenly, liberals are supposed pushed to feel that they ought to vote for her because she's a woman.

Oh, no! It's men in trucks! Plowing in from Texas! Running down all the women! Rape!

The Democrats and Rush Limbaugh: An intriguing symbiosis.

Jonathan Martin describes the dynamic:

The strategy took shape after Democratic strategists Stanley Greenberg and James Carville included Limbaugh’s name in an October poll and learned [that he had an 11% approval rating with voters under 40]. Then the conservative talk-radio host emerged as an unapologetic critic of Barack Obama shortly before his inauguration, when even many Republicans were showering him with praise.

Rush's "I hope he fails" line was big.

... Democrats realized they could roll out a new GOP bogeyman for the post-Bush era by turning to an old one in Limbaugh, a polarizing figure since he rose to prominence in the 1990s.

Limbaugh is embracing the line of attack, suggesting a certain symbiosis between him and his political adversaries.

"The Administration is enabling me,” he wrote in an email to POLITICO. “They are expanding my profile, expanding my audience and expanding my influence. An ever larger number of people are now being exposed to the antidote to Obamaism: conservatism, as articulated by me. An ever larger number of people are now exposed to substantive warnings, analysis and criticism of Obama's policies and intentions, a ‘story’ I own because the [mainstream media] is largely the Obama Press Office.”

The bigger, the better, agreed Carville. “It’s great for us, great for him, great for the press,” he said of Limbaugh. “The only people he’s not good for are the actual Republicans in Congress.”

Now, of course, Carville, as usual, is crowing about the fabulous Democrats and mocking those dismal losers on the other side. But he must also secretly be scared of the Democrats' powerful, fearless, articulate critic. Those Republicans in Congress were conveniently cowed, and the last thing that needed to be done was to ruin Rush. But Rush gets energy from the attention. If only those under 40 folks would actually listen to his radio show and find out what he's really saying. It's easy to hate him from afar, to regard him as poison, not to be touched at all. I felt that way myself. But if they were to overcome that barrier and actually listen — as I did — they might get hooked in — as I did.

By February, Carville and Begala were pounding on Limbaugh frequently in their appearances on CNN.

Neither Democrat would say so, but a third source said the two also began pushing the idea of targeting Limbaugh in their daily phone conversations with Emanuel.

Conversations and email exchanges began taking place in and out of the White House not only between the old pals from the Clinton era but also including White House senior adviser David Axelrod, Deputy Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs and Woodhouse.

The White House needed no more convincing after Limbaugh’s hour-plus performance Saturday, celebrated on the right and mocked on the left, at the Conservative Political Action Conference, where he re-stated his hope Obama fails....

By Sunday morning, Emanuel elevated the strategy by bringing up the conservative talker, unprompted, on CBS’s “Face the Nation” and calling him the “the voice and the intellectual force and energy behind the Republican Party.”

Even Republican National Chairman Michael Steele joined in with a surprising critique of Limbaugh as a mere “entertainer,” who is “ugly” and “incendiary.”

“He took a little match we had tossed on the leaves and poured gasoline on it,” said one Democrat of Steele.

Steele was forced into calling Limbaugh to apologize Monday, an embarrassing climb-down following the RNC chairman’s criticism of the conservative talk-show host.

But Democrats kept at it in rapid-fire succession, thrilled that Steele had validated their claim that Republicans were scared to cross Limbaugh...

“I want to send Rush a bottle of vitamins,” said Begala. “We need him to stay healthy and loud and proud.”

Oh, really?

It’s something of a back to the future tactic for Democrats: painting the GOP as the party of the angry white male. But unlike Newt Gingrich or other prominent Republicans, Limbaugh doesn’t have to mind his tongue.

So let's have a free-wheeling outsider voice reviving conservatism. In fact, with all this newfound power, Rush is likely to concentrate on explaining conservatism. He's not out of control, and it would be naive to think he's going to say outrageous things that can be used to hurt Republicans. He's more likely to throw stink bombs when he's not getting enough attention. What he will do now, I think, is highlight things Democrats say and show you why those things are outrageous — and he is at his best and most entertaining when he does exactly that.

“The television cameras just can’t stay away from him,” Carville said Tuesday.... “Our strategy depends on him keeping talking, and I think we’re going to succeed.”

It's a risky game, and Limbaugh can't lose it. We'll see what happens to the Republicans he means to help.