Both CQ Politics and Politico report that last night, some members of the House Democratic caucus expressed their frustration with Robert Gibbs for acknowledging what everybody knows is true: Republicans could win a majority of seats in Congress in this November's election.
Apparently, some members are concerned that Gibbs' comments could prove to be politically damaging, but if you actually read the words he said, it's hard to see how it could be damaging. As a refresher, he made the argument that the possibility of GOP victory made it clear that this fall's election is a choice, not a referendum. Moreover, he argued that Republicans would be a bad choice and outlined a pretty damn solid game plan to run against them. The transcript:
MR. GIBBS: I think there's no doubt that there are a lot of seats that will be up, a lot of contested seats. I think people are going to have a choice to make in the fall. But I think there's no doubt there are enough seats in play that could cause Republicans to gain control. There's no doubt about that. This will depend on strong campaigns by Democrats. And again, I think we've got to take the issues to them. You know, are -- do you want to put in, in to the speakership of the House a guy who thinks that the, the financial calamity is, is tantamount to an ant? The guy who's the ranking member of the Energy and Commerce Committee, Joe Barton, started his congressional testimony of the CEO of BP by apologizing, not to the people in the gulf, but to the CEO. I think that's a perfect window, not into what people are thinking, but the way they would govern. Joe Barton, John Boehner, those are the type of things you'll hear a lot, I think, from both the president and local candidates about what you'd get if the Republicans were to gain control.
There was nothing objectionable about what Gibbs said. Everybody knows Republicans could retake the majority, so Gibbs was saying: let's not stick our head in the sand, let's put that fact on the table and discuss what it would mean to have Republicans back in control, because the election in November is a choice. He was stating the obvious, and stating it well.
The day after Gibbs made his comments, Eric Cantor seized on them and predicted GOP victory this fall.
"I think we're going to retake the House, as Mr. Gibbs suggested yesterday," Cantor said on CNBC's Squawk Box. "That's going to change the dynamic for sure."
"When we regain the House -- because I do think that we'll retake the majority -- the president will have to deal with us," Cantor said, speaking more optimistically about the GOP's political fortunes than his colleagues have in the past.
For Democrats, Cantor's statement was a much juicier political target than Robert Gibbs' Sunday comments. Cantor -- the number two guy in the House -- was putting himself on record saying that the GOP is running to retake control of Congress. That in itself gives Democrats an opportunity to discuss -- and define -- the GOP's governing agenda, which as Boehner and Barton have shown wouldn't be any different than the approach Republicans took under eight years of George W. Bush.
The bottom-line here is that Gibbs never said Republicans would win this fall. He merely said they could win. And he offered up a pretty compelling roadmap for how to make sure that doesn't happen.