There's a diary on the rec list whose main point regarding our odious media I agree with; however there's a line in there that in my opinion has been repeated here and elsewhere on the left side of the divide far too often: "when we lose the House." There are other variants, such as "if we lose the House, the House is in play, we might lose the House." I believe this kind of talk is not only defeatist and absolutely premature, but is self-reinforcing and is hardly borne out by the polls.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating blatant and willful ignorance and naive optimism. I know this is a tough year for the Democrats, and that we're likely to lose seats (possibly many) in both houses of Congress. That being said, we're approximately six months away from the midterms and the Dems are down a mere two (2) points in the generic ballot on pollster.com. If I'm not mistaken, that's easily within the margin of error. I'm also aware that we're suffering from an intensity gap, as we are all reminded everyday by the insane rantings and outrageous actions from the right. However, it is my firm belief that by election day, these numbers will have narrowed, if not closed. You want to know why? Because we will be seeing ads saying "do you really want to put these guys back in charge of our nation, who nearly destroyed it only two years ago?" complete with sepia toned photos of prominent Republian politicians. I think this reminder will be very effective. These constant reminders will take a toll on some of our independent friends who are leaning GOP right now, not to mention some disaffected Dems who are thinking about sitting this one out.
Saying we're going to lose the House (or we might) is understandable from a random poster on a blog, but for someone who is actually in the party apparatus in Washington to say it is nearly unforgivable. I say this because I read that very line of thinking in an incredibly weak NYT article a few days ago from the Concern Troll Extraordinaire Adam Nagourney. Party brass saying these things is baffling - it creates a perception of weakness and lack of confidence of ultimate victory. If your job is to win, don't fucking talk about losing. A more helpful attitude was shown in the quotes from Rep. Early Pomeroy from North Dakota. He simply said "this is a tough cycle, I've been in tough cycles before." Short, to the point, and certainly not as fatalistic as others were sounding. We all know the media will do everything in their power to push the meme of "Dems in disarray, likely to lose ten thousand seats, party likely to fold following election, public enamored with charm of Jim Inhofe." The point is they don't need any help from any of us, especially elected officials, to push this line of horseshit.
What we need is confidence in our position, and (I hate to phrase it this way) a campaign of [well-founded] fear against the possibility of putting the insane Republican Party back in power. Combine these two things and the base will come home. If they keep hearing things reeking of "this year's a lost cause" it will make the Republicans job that much easier.
So in summary: we're not going to lose the House. You know why? Because we're not going to let the Republicans win, and because the Republican Party is absolutely batshit insane. And most people hate batshit insane when it's coming from a political party. We're simply not going to lose to these do-nothing clowns. Hopefully this most unhelpful meme stops today.