From the Department of Wishful Thinking comes Eleanor Clift, who consoled her fellow Democrats in the Newsweek.com live chat last week. She began by listing her favorite negatives: “The Democrats’ challenge is to expose the flaws in Bush’s house of cards — the jobless recovery, the most expensive manhunt in history that can hardly be justified by capturing Saddam, and a Medicare plan that promises way more than it will ever deliver…”

She also suggested the terror-worried economy should be big trouble for the White House: “The loss of 3 million jobs is a potent political issue. Bush will be the first president since Herbert Hoover to register a NEGATIVE job growth. That alone should be enough to sink him. But as they say, 9/11 changed everything, and it certainly changed the political outlook for Bush, who has staked his presidency on his claim that he has made us safer. A lot of Americans want to believe that, and puncturing that myth is what the Dems must do if they are to defeat Bush.”