Why? Because they've started celebrating moral victories:
Democrats on Wednesday celebrated a closer-than-expected loss in a special House of Representatives race in Ohio and called it a warning sign for Republicans entering the 2006 congressional elections.
Because nothing says you're ready for the next step like being happy you weren't blown out by the big boys. I learned that from many, many years watching Illinois football.
DOWNDATE: But the most silly and egregious logic error behind this kind of thinking by Democrats is taking a single data point and extrapolating from it, in any direction. Even if Hackett had won, projecting a Democratic landslide from this in the next general election, as I believe Rahm Emmanuel has, is just stupid. There's another saying from my engineering youth that is applicable here as well -- all thrust and no vector.
And Hackett had campaign ads implying that he supported President Bush and the war in Iraq. Yeah, I've seen THAT position given a prominent position in the Democratic platform nationally.
Posted by: Jon at 10:19 AMMust be AEs. Aero guys can (and do) extrapolate from a single datum.
Posted by: Slartibartfast at 12:08 PM