A QUOTE THAT MAY HAVE A VERY LONG SHELF LIFE

Here's Nancy Pelosi, explaining (quite sensibly) why she is not the reason Democrats lost the House, in an NPR interview:

In any circumstance when you have nine-and-half percent unemployment, any party that cannot turn that into political gain should hang up the gloves.

I'm drawing attention to this quote for other reasons -- see below -- but first I'll defend Pelosi. She's right -- Republicans attacked her relentlessly, spending bucketloads of money, and she never managed (or, really, tried) to win the country over to her side -- but that alone might have cost the Democrats two or three seats at most. Republicans would have done the same to anyone in her position. The economy, a health care bill that consumed a year of wrangling and was never adequately defended by its supporters, bailouts that were also never properly defended, the failure to get tough on Wall Street (one fat-cat perp walk might have saved the House) -- and, of course, the persistent lousy economy: obviously, that's the list of reasons Democrats lost.

But that's not why I'm drawing attention to this quote. I'm drawing attention to it because we're about to enter into a two-year period of gridlock, if not neo-Hooverism, if not an insane combination of giveaways to special interests and pain for non-fat-cats far beyond even the usual levels. And then, in 2012, we're going to elect an all-GOP federal government, and things will undoubtedly get even worse.

So you'd think Democrats would have a good shot at yet another wave election in 2014. But, well, these are Democrats we're talking about. They'll probably screw it up. Unemployment will have been over 10% for years, the despair will be increasing with every passing day ... and still Republicans will hang on to their congressional majorities.

And then it will be remembered that Nancy Pelosi said, way back in the aftermath of the 2010 midterms:

In any circumstance when you have nine-and-half percent unemployment, any party that cannot turn that into political gain should hang up the gloves.