If you’re curious how the Iraqi-elections story will begin to get spun into “wait a minute, not so great,” see Howard Kurtz’s (pretty balanced) roundup today in the WashPost. Former Newsweek-er Donatella Lorch ends it by trying to claim that 45 people dying during an American election would be big news. If we’re jaded now, that’s only because the press has made the daily bombing the lead story almost every day. Oh, and when Kurtz let fairly hawkish scholar Ken Pollack say there’s not necessarily liberal bias in the coverage, he could disclose that Pollack is married to CNN’s Andrea Koppel, and so his papa-in-law is Ted “Iraq: Why Stay?” Koppel.

PS: The Post op-ed page today has yes-but columns from E.J. Dionne and Richard Cohen as well. Cohen scolds “failure may yet materialize.”