Living in a time when the prevailing civic religion treats the past as a far away planet can be exasperating. For example, when the people who have been in charge of race relations pretend they have just stumbled upon the issue. When you point out that they have been bitching about the problem for 70 years and they have been in charge of fixing it for 50 of those years, they call you a racist. It’s as if they suffer from a Irish Alzheimer’s. They only remember the grudges. But, it is not without its fascinating strangeness. Here’s a good example.

Whatever happened to good old American know-how?

The nation that invented modern management seems to be suffering a crisis of competence.

The Secret Service can’t protect the White House. Public health authorities can’t get their arms around a one-man Ebola outbreak. The army we trained in Iraq collapsed as soon as it was attacked by Islamic extremists, and our own veterans can’t get the care they need at VA hospitals. And, lest we forget, it was only a year ago that the White House rolled out its national health insurance program, only to see its website grind to a halt.

Yes, you can argue that these problems all have different causes.

But it’s hard not to conclude that something basic is amiss in Washington.

It’s like sports fans when their team loses. “They” lost the game. Or, “they” need new management. When the team wins, then it is “we won.” Liberals  have been in charge of Washington since FDR, but now that it is coming apart, “they” have let us down, as if they are just passive observers.

“This isn’t a partisan problem,” argues Linda Bilmes, a public policy scholar at Harvard’s Kennedy School who worked in the Clinton administration — although she does fault the people at the top. “It hasn’t been a priority under this president to appoint good managers to top positions, but it wasn’t a priority under George W. Bush either.”

When things go wrong under a Democrat, it is a systemic problem. When they go wrong under a Republican, it is a failure of conservatism, capitalism, etc. The goalposts are on skates and they are moved around by the fanatics as required.

One basic problem, she said, is that the federal government’s personnel system is mired in antiquated civil service rules. “You can’t move people around; you can’t pay more to retain your best people; you can’t easily get rid of people you need to get rid of.” Additionally, she noted, “the pay at the top of the scale is inadequate to attract the best and the brightest into government, and as the old saying goes, if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys. It’s very demoralizing.”

This is a common malady of modern times. They never stop to wonder why we have all of these rules. The modern reformer never bothers to ask why things are as they are, they just assume they sprung from nothingness. Therefore, driving a bulldozer through the existing order is always acceptable. I’m not defending the civil service rules, but there’s a reason for all of it. In almost all cases, the rules exist to prevent theft.

The other problem is the rank acceptance of corporatism. Government should never be attracting the best and the brightest. Government is a necessary evil, not the end point of human civilization. The modern mandarin, however, cerebrates the custodial state with the same degree of enthusiasm as the typical corrections officer embraces the drug war. In both cases, the expansion of the state means more opportunities for the barnacles to attach themselves to society.

In her view, Obama never made management a high priority — and it shows.

Until the Veterans Affairs scandal erupted this year, for example, there wasn’t a full-time implementation officer in the White House to monitor the performance of federal agencies.

“This administration has been disconnected from the government it’s supposed to be running,” Kamarck charges (and, remember, she’s a Democrat). “They seem to view the federal workforce as hostile territory. They don’t engage with it…. They don’t have a strong system of getting info from the agencies to the president.”

 It seems like they have no trouble getting the IRS to go after their enemies. They had no trouble using the FBI and NSA to get dirt on people they wanted to leverage. This just sounds like a Clinton toady taking shots at Team Obama as Clinton gets ready for another run at the White House. But, it is a fascinating look into the minds of a cult member. As I wrote above, they are a lot like sports fans. “They” are losing, but a few years ago “we” were winning.

Chris Mathews, like many on the Left, went insane during the Bush years and never recovered. Instead of getting proper medical care, he was given a TV show. Despite living in the only whites-only town in the Baltimore – Washington area, he has spent the last six years lecturing us about race. His central claim is that all mention of Obama outside the Left is motivated by race. Now, Mathews is calling Obama a shuffling, well, he’s calling him lazy. I’ll leave it at that.

CHRIS MATTHEWS: Let’s get tough here. Is this the problem of a second term that presidents get lazy, intellectually lazy, and cut off from the country and they start picking deputies for jobs instead of looking for the best people? The lazy thing to do is somebody leaves, you promote their deputy. This is, I think, part of the endemic problem of second terms. They don’t go out and mix with people, find new people, new hotshots to fill these jobs. They just keep promoting the person whose turn it is and they’re not as good as the person they picked the first time…

MATTHEWS: And before you get me accusing this president of being physically lazy. I think there is a social kind of laziness. Refusing to reach out and meet a lot new people and check a lot of possibilities. Don’t just go with the next person in line. And I really think this second term cabinet is not up to the first term cabinet because they never are. And you know that, Roger. They just never are.

Kennedy went out and met people like [Robert] McNamara and [Dean] Rusk and he went looking for them and he put them into the best slots he could. And he talked them into it, he recruited people he didn’t even know [and] he recruited them. Presidents should go out and look for people. They should be practicing affirmative action all the time in leading or else they get atrophied into that little world of people like Valerie [Jarrett] and Mrs. Obama and you’re just listening to the same voices all the time.

I know it is a rigorous demand but it’s a real one. Or else you’re going to get smaller as your presidency goes on and therefore more vulnerable to surprises.

The hilarious thing about the Left’s elevation of Obama to the top spot is how little they know about the man. In his two autobiographies, he went on at length about being lazy. He has said this in interviews. He has gone into detail about how he gets bored with all sorts of things like showing up for work and listening to advisors. Yet, the Left is always surprised that Obama is what he says he is. it’s almost as if they really don’t care about Obama the man and just see the black guy. Like they can’t get past his skin color…

Conservative Inc. is term that turns up on the Right. The reason is they use politcs to sell stuff to people, rather than effect public policy. Michelle Malkin, a nice women, has made a tidy living repeating mindless platitudes on TV. She’s just a spokesmodel for Conservative Inc. Her job is to move product. She does that through TV appearances, blogging, radio, Twitter and so forth. Ann Coulter also churns out books and columns aimed at selling Ann Coulter, which also sells TV shows, radio spots, etc.

Another less obvious one is the consultancy rackets. Karl Rove has made himself millions dispensing bad advise to GOP candidates. The big money though is in selling hope so his army of fellow consultants can get paid by campaigns. Getting your buddies to tell National Review readers that Ed Gillespie has a prayer in his Senate race, means more money for Ed Gillespie to spend on consultants, ad buyers, pollsters, etc. It’s a lot like how the stock market used to work. They called it the churn.

This is an egregious example.

The new Quinnipiac poll of the New Jersey Senate contest shows Jeff Bell only 11 points down to Cory Booker, 51 to 40 percent, among likely voters. It goes without saying that a race can move a dozen points in the final five weeks of a campaign—especially when a little known challenger (but one who’s well-regarded by those who do know of him) is taking on a pro-Obama incumbent who’s barely above 50 percent in an anti-Obama, anti-incumbent year. (Obama’s approval in New Jersey is hovering around 41 percent.)

But take a further look at the poll results. Booker leads Bell, 51-40. Seventy-six percent of Booker supporters and 84 percent of Bell supporters say their mind is made up. Do the math. Among those whose mind is made up, Booker leads Bell 39 to 34 percent.

So Booker’s hard lead over Bell is a mere 5 points. He’ll outspend Bell over the next month. But money can’t buy you love. Sometimes, it can’t even buy you votes. If New Jersey flips in November, we’ll remember this Quinnipiac poll as Jeff Bell’s fire bell in the night.

First off, it is obvious click bait. I saw it on Drudge so it means a few million hits on The Weekly Standard site. Pitching an unwinnable race in New Jersey is not going to help Jeff Bell, but no one cares about him anyway. The real pitch is for the “wave” theory, which says “If Bell has a shot, imagine what your local GOP candidate could do with just a few dollars more from you!” It’s all about moving product. Books, magazines, TV shows and the massive consultancy racket that finances the mandarin class.

I saw this on NRO this morning. The other day, I went around and around with some sheeple that I suspected were campaign volunteers for Ed Gillespie, the Liberal Republican running for Senate in Virginia. My argument is a simple one. If you don’t see a choice on the ballot that represents your interests, not voting is always a choice and often the right one. If you’re choice is a child molester and a rapist, no one would fault you for refusing to endorse either option with your vote.

That’s the thing flaks like Jim Geraghty either don’t understand or would like you not to understand. The latter is a strong possibility as this has been explained to him dozens of times. A self-governing people not only selects amongst the options available, they decide on the options. One block offers up their preferred choice. Another block offers up their choice. The people unsure of which block is right ultimately decide. Some will reject all of the options and seek out an alternative.

The grifters of the GOP insist the dissenters are being unreasonable. After all, staying home means the other side wins. They always claim the dissenters are looking for perfection and that the dissenters are being childish. That’s obnoxiously stupid, which reinforces the sense amongst the dissenters that the flaks simply don’t respect the opinions of the dissenters. If every time you raise an objection you’re told to shut up and sit down, what other conclusion can you draw?

What’s irritating about the “perfection” claims is they are easily disproved by recent elections. Conservatives of all stripes, even paleos, came out in force for the GOP is 1994, 2000, 2004 and 2010. The latter election was fueled by the populist uprising called the Tea Party. Their aim was to reform the GOP, not embrace it. Ever since, the GOP has made war on these people. Telling these people that perfection is the enemy of the good enough, when they have been living that life and got nothing but abuse for it, is a kick in the teeth.

The problem for the GOP is that no one believes them. The Bush years were a disaster for the Right and the GOP. A lot of Tea Party types would run back to them if the GOP leadership was at least willing to admit they bungled things in the Bush years. Guys like Jim Geraghty, no one’s idea of a deep thinker, would do the most good popularizing these confessions, not defending the privileges of an increasingly alien party establishment. But, offering up profiteers like Ed Gillespie in a winnable Senate race, however, says the GOP is more concerned with purging their party of voters than fighting the Liberal Democrats.

This can’t last. It is why UKIP is about to drive a beer truck through the Tories. The large number of Euro-skeptic in England need a party. The large number of diversity and immigration skeptics need a party. If the main parties refuse to speak to the issues important to the people, the people will inevitably find someone who will. In the fullness of time, the GOP’s decision to make war on the Tea Party will be seen as the turning point similar to what the Compromise of 1850 was to the Whig Party.

People on the Right are the most likely to accept half a loaf. It is their greatest flaw, one that the Left has expertly exploited since the birth of the American Left. The reasonableness and politeness of the Right is its broken window, through which all of the Rousseau-ist rats have entered. The party that pretends to represent the Right can no longer demand their voters reach into the bowl and select a turd for their turd sandwich.  Half a loaf is one thing. Half a turd is beyond the pale.

President Obama spoke at a Ku Klux Klan rally today.

Hello, CBC!  (Applause.)  Thank you so much.  Everybody, have a seat.  It is good to be with you here tonight.  If it wasn’t black tie I would have worn my tan suit.  (Laughter.)  I thought it looked good.  (Laughter.)

Thank you, Chaka, for that introduction.  Thanks to all of you for having me here this evening. I want to acknowledge the members of the Congressional Black Caucus and Chairwoman Marcia Fudge for their outstanding work.  (Applause.)  Thank you, Shuanise Washington, and the CBC Foundation for doing so much to help our young people aim high and reach their potential.

Tonight, I want to begin by paying special tribute to a man with whom all of you have worked closely with; someone who served his country for nearly 40 years as a prosecutor, as a judge, and as Attorney General of the United States:  Mr. Eric Holder.  (Applause.)  Throughout his long career in public service, Eric has built a powerful legacy of making sure that equal justice under the law actually means something; that it applies to everybody — regardless of race, or gender, or religion, or color, creed, disability, sexual orientation.  He has been a great friend of mine.  He has been a faithful servant of the American people.  We will miss him badly.  (Applause.)

This year, we’ve been marking the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act.  We honor giants like John Lewis — (applause); unsung heroines like Evelyn Lowery.  We honor the countless Americans, some who are in this room — black, white, students, scholars, preachers, housekeepers, patriots all, who, with their bare hands, reached into the well of our nation’s founding ideals and helped to nurture a more perfect union.  We’ve reminded ourselves that progress is not just absorbing what has been done — it’s advancing what’s left undone.

Even before President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act into law, even as the debate dragged on in the Senate, he was already challenging America to do more and march further, to build a Great Society — one, Johnson said, “where no child will go unfed, and no youngster will go unschooled.  Where no man who wants work will fail to find it.  Where no citizen will be barred from any door because of his birthplace or his color or his church.  Where peace and security is common among neighbors and possible among nations.”  “This is the world that waits for you,” he said.  “Reach out for it now.  Join the fight to finish the unfinished work.”  To finish the unfinished work.

America has made stunning progress since that time, over the past 50 years — even over the past five years.  But it is the unfinished work that drives us forward.

Some of our unfinished work lies beyond our borders.  America is leading the effort to rally the world against Russian aggression in Ukraine.  America is leading the fight to contain and combat Ebola in Africa.  America is building and leading the coalition that will degrade and ultimately destroy the terrorist group known as ISIL.  As Americans, we are leading, and we don’t shy away from these responsibilities; we welcome them.  (Applause.)  That’s what America does.  And we are grateful to the men and women in uniform who put themselves in harm’s way in service of the country that we all love.  (Applause.)

So we’ve got unfinished work overseas, but we’ve got some unfinished work right here at home.  (Applause.)  After the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, our businesses have now created 10 million new jobs over the last 54 months.  This is the longest uninterrupted stretch of job growth in our history.  (Applause.)  In our history.  But we understand our work is not done until we get the kind of job creation that means everybody who wants work can a find job.

We’ve done some work on health care, too.  I don’t know if you’ve noticed.  Thanks to the Affordable Care Act, we’ve seen a 26 percent decline in the uninsured rate in America.  (Applause.)  African Americans have seen a 30 percent decline.  And, by the way, the cost of health care isn’t going up as fast anymore either.  Everybody was predicting this was all going to be so expensive.  We’ve saved $800 billion — (applause) — in Medicare because of the work that we’ve done — slowing the cost, improving quality, and improving access.  Despite unyielding opposition, this change has happened just in the last couple years.

But we know our work is not yet done until we get into more communities, help more uninsured folks get covered, especially in those states where the governors aren’t being quite as cooperative as we’d like them to be.  (Applause.)  You know who you are.  It always puzzles me when you decide to take a stand to make sure poor folks in your state can’t get health insurance even though it doesn’t cost you a dime.  That doesn’t make much sense to me, but I won’t go on on that topic.  (Applause.)  We’ve got more work to do.

It’s easy to take a stand when you’ve got health insurance.  (Laughter and applause.)  I’m going off script now, but — (laughter) — that’s what happens at the CBC.

Our high school graduation rate is at a record high, the dropout rate is falling, more young people are earning college degrees than ever before.  Last year, the number of children living in poverty fell by 1.4 million — the largest decline since 1966.  (Applause.)  Since I took office, the overall crime rate and the overall incarceration rate has gone down by about 10 percent.  That’s the first time they’ve declined at the same time in more than 40 years.  Fewer folks in jail.  Crime still going down.  (Applause.)

But our work is not done when too many children live in crumbling neighborhoods, cycling through substandard schools, traumatized by daily violence.  Our work is not done when working Americans of all races have seen their wages and incomes stagnate, even as corporate profits soar; when African-American unemployment is still twice as high as white unemployment; when income inequality, on the rise for decades, continues to hold back hardworking communities, especially communities of color.  We’ve got unfinished work.  And we know what to do.  That’s the worst part — we know what to do. 

We know we’ve got to invest in infrastructure, and manufacturing, and research and development that creates new jobs.  We’ve got to keep rebuilding a middle class economy with ladders of opportunity, so that hard work pays off and you see higher wages and higher incomes, and fair pay for women doing the same work as men, and workplace flexibility for parents in case a child gets sick or a parent needs some help.  (Applause.)  We’ve got to build more Promise Zones partnerships to support local revitalization of hard-hit communities.  We’ve got to keep investing in early education.  We want to bring preschool to every four-year-old in this country.  (Applause.)  And we want every child to have an excellent teacher.  And we want to invest in our community colleges and expand Pell Grants for more students.  And I’m going to keep working with you to make college more affordable.  Because every child in America, no matter who she is, no matter where she’s born, no matter how much money her parents have, ought to be able to fulfill her God-given potential.  That’s what we believe.  (Applause.)

So I just want everybody to understand — we have made enormous progress.  There’s almost no economic measure by which we are not better off than when I took office.  (Applause.)  Unemployment down.  Deficits down.  Uninsured down.  Poverty down.  Energy production up.  Manufacturing back.  Auto industry back.  But — and I just list these things just so if you have a discussion with one of your friends — (laughter) — and they’re confused.  Stock market up.  Corporate balance sheet strong.  In fact, the folks who are doing the best, they’re the ones who complain the most.  (Laughter and applause.)  So you can just point these things out.

But we still have to close these opportunity gaps.  And we have to close the justice gap — how justice is applied, but also how it is perceived, how it is experienced.  (Applause.)  Eric Holder understands this.  (Applause.)  That’s what we saw in Ferguson this summer, when Michael Brown was killed and a community was divided.  We know that the unrest continues.   And Eric spent some time with the residents and police of Ferguson, and the Department of Justice has indicated that its civil rights investigation is ongoing.

Now, I won’t comment on the investigation.  I know that Michael’s family is here tonight.  (Applause.)  I know that nothing any of us can say can ease the grief of losing a child so soon.  But the anger and the emotion that followed his death awakened our nation once again to the reality that people in this room have long understood, which is, in too many communities around the country, a gulf of mistrust exists between local residents and law enforcement.

Too many young men of color feel targeted by law enforcement, guilty of walking while black, or driving while black, judged by stereotypes that fuel fear and resentment and hopelessness.  We know that, statistically, in everything from enforcing drug policy to applying the death penalty to pulling people over, there are significant racial disparities.  That’s just the statistics.  One recent poll showed that the majority of Americans think the criminal justice system doesn’t treat people of all races equally.  Think about that.  That’s not just blacks, not just Latinos or Asians or Native Americans saying things may not be unfair.  That’s most Americans.

Draw whatever conclusions you like.

Maybe it was here or maybe somewhere else, but I have wondered why people don’t sue these nuts who organize campaigns to get people fired. In the law, intentional interference with the contractual relationship of another person is a tort. Commonly, causing someone to not fulfill their contractual obligations is actionable. Going to customers or vendors of a business, under false pretenses, in order to get those customers and vendors to stop doing business with that business looks like a slam dunk to me. When the tortfeasor admits in public to the act, it should be automatic.

The recent campaign to silence conservative radio legend Rush Limbaugh is led by ten liberal activists engaged in a more than four-year long effort to destroy Limbaugh by targeting his advertisers, including a Media Matters executive vice president.A former Kent State university professor even targeted a small businessman advertising on Limbaugh’s show using her official university email account.

Information compiled by Limbaugh’s team — and first provided to The Daily Caller — demonstrates that nearly 70 percent of the tweets targeting Limbaugh’s advertisers come from the same ten Twitter users, all of whom are actively involved in the “Stop Rush” campaign, which keeps a database of all of Limbaugh’s advertisers.

Now, there’s a difference between a group of people posting their complaints and a group of people conspiring to cause harm. I suppose the argument, from a free speech perspective, is that these people are conspiring to get the public to tune out Limbaugh by convincing the public he is in error.

But, that’s not what we see here. These people are misrepresenting themselves to one party of a business relationship. Their singular purpose is to disrupt that business relationship. If Limbaugh was a donut shop and these guys were claiming Limbaugh stirs the dough with his junk, he could and certainly would sue their ass off.

While the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) is presenting its current anti-Rush campaign as a genuine repudiation of out-of-context remarks Limbaugh made on his radio show (replete with a fundraising email from Sandra Fluke), the Stop Rush effort is small, organized and existed long before the most recent controversial Limbaugh comments.

The activists even use technology to “machine-tweet” anti-Rush comments in robotic fashion to ensure maximum Twitter exposure for their insular group’s efforts.

“Angelo Carusone is the self acknowledged originator and head of the StopRush protest, in his professional role as executive vice president of Media Matters for America,” Limbaugh spokesman Brian Glicklich told TheDC. “But since they prefer it look grassroots and made up of real customers, he faded into the background long ago, reemerging only this week as he senses the danger of this illicit scheme being exposed for the fiction at it’s heart.”

Conrad Walton, owner of the emergency supplies company Survivor.com, revealed in a blog post that he began receiving emails from the small group “within 20 minutes” of his local advertisement airing during Limbaugh’s show on the Los Angeles station KEIB.

“It seemed to be a very organized campaign, from people who don’t listen to the show and know nothing about our company,” Walton wrote. “I just checked and they put one of my responses on their site, with my phone number.”

“Please stop advertising on Rush Limbaugh’s program,” former Kent State University professor Nancy Padak wrote to Walton using her “kent.edu” email address. “He stands for hatred and bigotry. Do you want customers/ potential customers associating your business with these values?”

Padak told TheDC that she has been retired from the university for four years.

Again, there’s nothing wrong with a pissed of person calling a business and giving them what for. If the reason for being pissed off is the business supports a heretic, that changes nothing. Getting your friends together to pretend to be something you’re not in order to pressure a business to end their business with another business is fraud, at the minimum. That’s clearly what we have here and it should be actionable.

As an aside, I love how the Daily Caller does things like this. They put the names and background out there, inviting people to let these idiots know how they feel about it. It is a trick they borrowed from the Lefty press.

Here are the names of the Stop Rush Ten, as identified by Limbaugh’s staff:

Angelo Carusone: Executive vice president of the George Soros-funded liberal attack group Media Matters for America. “Stop Rush, I initially rolled it out in late 2009 and early 2010,” Carusone told the Village Voice in 2012. “At the time, the Beck work was doing well…I started Stop Rush in 2009, 2010, and when I went to register the domain, I saw that Rush owned StopRush.com.” Carusone also agreed with the Village Voice that Sandra Fluke represented Limbaugh’s “Waterloo.” Carusone is responsible for leading the Stop Rush efforts and then “handing off” responsibilities to less well-known activists to create the appearance of grassroots outrage, according to Limbaugh’s staff.

Matthew Mitchell: An Altamont Springs, Florida resident who tweets as @CaptMurdock.

Nancy Padak: A former Kent State University education professor who emails advertisers about Limbaugh from her official university email account.

Jason Rey: Georgia resident who tweets as @FranticQuark.

Lauren Reynolds: Los Angeles resident who uses Internet rating systems to downgrade companies for advertising on Limbaugh’s show.

Cherie Richards: Ohio resident and fellow Internet rating aficionado.

Sarah Smyea Rivers: California resident who actively tweets as @eurekasue49.

Dennis William Rohner: Florida resident.

Linda Kotsenburg Swanholm: California resident responsible for creating “target lists” of businesses linked to Limbaugh.

Carol Kernahan Wallin: California resident and anonymous Daily Kos writer who tweets as @Flushfools and @hrhprincess.

A lot of conservatives are hoping for a wave election this November. They still hold out hope that a GOP majority will halt the decay and mark the turnaround. This story from The Hill says otherwise.

It wasn’t part of the jobs message he planned to pitch, but Speaker John Boehner said Thursday that immigration reform would help boost the economy.

“Immigration reform will help our economy, but you’ve got to secure the border first,” the Ohio Republican said after a speech at the conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute. “We’ve got a mess and everyone knows we’ve got a mess.

“Our legal system is broken, our border isn’t secure, and we’ve got the problem of those who are here without documents,” the Speaker continued. “It needs to be fixed. We’re a nation of immigrants, the sooner we do it, the better off the country would be.”

His immigration comments, in response to an audience question, weren’t part of his prepared remarks. They followed a 20-minute-speech in which Boehner laid out his five-point plan to jump-start America’s economy.

As everyone knows, flooding the nation with new workers will drive up wages and make everyone richer. All of that twaddle about supply and demand is just nonsense. It really is incredible how the basics of economics are thrown out the window when it comes to immigration and foreign workers.

It is well known that Boehner has a well paid landing spot lined up. He needs to seal the deal with an amnesty bill. He tried to do it over the summer, but Obama screwed it up with the Children’s Crusade at the border. They thought that was a winner, but the backlash made passing amnesty an act of suicide. After the election, during the lame duck session, Boehner will bring up an amnesty bill and it will pass.

In theory,  a massive Republican victory in November would be the best thing for the country, at least what’s left of it. They could bottle up Barry’s judicial nominees for two years and stop his planned amnesty. Barry would be a lame duck and spend the next two years planning his retirement. The Republicans would do nothing to address the many things that ail the nation, but they would slow the decline.

On the other hand, a loss would throw cold water on Conservative Inc and the traitors in the Republican Party. The crew at National Review would be wearing black arm bands for a week. But, there’s the danger they draw the wrong lesson and lurch even further to the Left. If the 2010 election told them they had to try and compromise with Barry, they will find some way to snatch failure from a victory.

Democrats are now (very slightly) favored to hold the Senate majority on Nov. 4, according to Election Lab, The Post’s statistical model of the 2014 midterm elections.

Election Lab puts Democrats’ chances of retaining their majority at 51 percent — a huge change from even a few months ago, when the model predicted that Republicans had a better than 80 percent chance of winning the six seats they need to take control. (Worth noting: When the model showed Republicans as overwhelming favorites, our model builders — led by George Washington University’s John Sides — warned that the model could and would change as more actual polling — as opposed to historical projections — played a larger and larger role in the calculations. And, in Republicans’ defense, no one I talked to ever thought they had an 80 percent chance of winning the majority.)

So, what exactly has changed to move the Election Lab projection? Three big things:

* Colorado: On Aug. 27 — the last time I wrote a big piece on the model — Election Lab said Sen. Mark Udall (D) had a 64 percent chance of winning. Today he has a 94 percent chance.

* Iowa: Two weeks ago, the model gave state Sen. Joni Ernst (R) a 72 percent chance of winning. Today she has a 59 percent chance.

* Kansas: Republican Sen. Pat Roberts’s reelection race wasn’t even on the radar on Aug. 27. Today, Election Lab predicts that he has just a 68 percent chance of winning.

In addition to that trio of moves in Democrats’ direction, Louisiana has moved slightly in Democrats’ favor (from a 57 percent chance of losing to a 53 percent chance), as has North Carolina (a 97 percent chance of winning now as opposed to a 92 percent chance on Aug. 27).

The “data lab” at the Washington Post is a room covered in posters of Barry. Note that around this time in 2006 the GOP was making similar noises about polling. They were crushed two months later.