For Horserace Addicts

Douthat's read on 2010:

Right now, I think a lot of Democrats would take a 1982-style result the halving of their House majority and consider themselves lucky to escape. Whether they’ll feel the same way in a year’s time will depend on where the unemployment numbers go from here. But I doubt that anyone on the Democratic side of the aisle was encouraged to hear the Obama administration’s Jared Bernstein the co-author of the over-optimistic chart that I tweaked in today’s column telling CBS last week that job growth won’t return until the second half of next year. He may be erring on side of pessimism, but that’s an awfully long way off especially if unemployment goes higher still in the meantime and much too close to November for comfort.