MEASURING THE DRAPES

According to Newsweek, Bush was right -- a loser-to-be really was assuming victory prematurely:

Two weeks before the elections, Rove showed NEWSWEEK his magic numbers: a series of graphs and bar charts that tallied early voting and voter outreach. Both were running far higher than in 2004. In fact, Rove thought the polls were obsolete because they relied on home telephones in an age of do-not-call lists and cell phones. Based on his models, he forecast a loss of 12 to 14 seats in the House -- enough to hang on to the majority. Rove placed so much faith in his figures that, after the elections, he planned to convene a panel of Republican political scientists -- to study just how wrong the polls were.

Arrogant jerk.

And what I find especially satisfying is that Rove, who's always believed he's several steps ahead of the Democrats, was making the same mistake many Democrats made two years ago. We learned back then that it was naive to look at troubling polls and say, "Oh, the pollsters are missing our big base of support among people who don't have land lines." We learned that, but the Boy Genius never figured it out? Tee-hee.