White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs took a swipe at Sarah Palin Tuesday, mimicking the former vice presidential candidate’s decision to use her hand as a notepad at the National Tea Party Convention last week.

At the daily press briefing, Gibb showed his left hand with writing on it, which apparently was his grocery list to purchase ahead of the expected snowstorm.

On a scale of one to awesome, I give it an 11, but Sullivan is pissed:

Really: this stunt is pathetic, demeaning and stupid – a disgrace to his office.

After Ari Fleischer, Dana Perino, and McClellan (who spent the last year informing everyone that he is as disgusted with himself as we were with him), I’m really not sure how you disgrace that office.

Again, I’m rocking the emotional maturity of a nine year old after a six pack of Dr. Pepper and three sticks of cotton candy, but I think what Gibbs did was awesome. These guys have been running around screaming Obama is a socialist and weak on terror and pals around with terrorists for two years now- a little joke at their expense is no big deal, in my book.

Aside from that, I’ve noticed Sullivan just doesn’t like Gibbs all that much, so it is personal now.

The danger of overconfidence regarding the midterm results is not just that it can make the GOP complacent, arrogant and deaf to the real concerns of voters. It creates unduly high expectations that will make even an average or decent election result seem more like a defeat. The more the GOP hypes its chances of retaking one or both houses this year, the more devastating the failure to do so will be. After GOP-friendly analysts and pundits have been telling the tale of 1974 or 1994-style losses for the presidential party all year, modest gains will make it feel as if the election is a third straight repudiation of Republicans, because their leaders will have made the election a referendum on their readiness to be in the majority rather than a referendum on the administration.

The psychology of this is simple but very important. As in anything else, if performance exceeds expectations the reputation of the company, party or individual improves much more than if the performance falls short. If Republicans succumb to the temptation to believe that they are going to do something that is virtually unprecedented in electoral politics, and if they begin telling themselves and everyone else that they believe this, it will do them no good after the midterms for them to say that they had set their sights too high. Declaring that they can win 40 House seats, as several members of the leadership seem to think they can, they had better win at least 30 or be considered complete failures. If they were wiser and set the bar much lower at 15 or 20 seats, 25 pick-ups would look much more impressive.

It’s always difficult to say what effect confidence-bordering-on-overconfidence has on elections, but my belief is that for every Martha Coakley hubris disaster, there’s two elections you win where you only had a good candidate because the prospects looked good. (That’s certainly been true for Democrats in New York State— Gillibrand and Dan Maffei are classic examples.) But right now, it’s true that Republican confidence may manifest itself as much in crazy teabag candidates as in strong candidates who wouldn’t have run otherwise.

On the idea that moderate Republican gains will be seen as “third straight repudiation of Republicans”, I think Larison is wrong. The rightgeist that governs Washington discourse will interpret any Republican gains as a victory for Republicans, a repudiation of Obama, and most likely a sign that Obama should move on to the V-chip/school uniform portion of his presidency. The real danger for Republicans is that this will encourage them to teabag that much harder in 2012 and thereafter.

Email me a link to yours and I might post a few in some new photo threads.

Called my congressman’s* local office. The staffer I spoke to there(a former colleague) said they are getting ‘don’t pass the bill’ calls, because the people for it assume that because the Representative is for it, they don’t need to call. The staffer said people who are for it need to call.

Even if you think that your Congressperson is a safe vote, call anyway. You will make make it that much easier for him or her to cast that key vote.

Democrats in Congress are holding White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel accountable for his part in the collapse of healthcare reform.

The emerging consensus among critics in both chambers is that Emanuel’s lack of Senate experience slowed President Barack Obama’s top domestic priority.

The share of the blame comes as cracks are beginning to show in Emanuel’s once-impregnable political armor. Last week he had to apologize after a report surfaced that he called liberal groups “retarded” in a private meeting.

No one, of course, is on the record. That doesn’t slow down Americblog:

Emanuel has presented himself as the all-powerful. He’s led Obama’s presidency into a tailspin (and Obama let him). While Emanuel hasn’t worked in the Senate, his Deputy Chief of Staff, Jim Messina, is a long-time former Senate staffer. How Emanuel and his crew destroyed the Obama brand so quickly will be the subject of debate for years to come.

Meanwhile, back at the Hill, this portion of the story that will get overlooked:

“I like Rahm; he’s always been a straight shooter with me,” said a Democratic centrist senator who was closely involved in the healthcare debate.

The lawmaker said Emanuel misjudged the Senate by focusing on only a few Republicans, citing Maine Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins as too narrow a pool.

“In the Senate, you have to anchor in the middle and build out,” said the lawmaker.

“They just wanted to win,” the source said of Emanuel and other White House strategists. “Their plan was to keep all the Democrats together and work like hell to get Snowe and Collins. The Senate doesn’t work that way. You need a radius of 10 to 12 from the other side if you’re going to have a shot.”

Anyone want to take a wild guess how Americablog and others in the progressive blogosphere would have reacted if Obama and Rahm had passed a bill in the Senate that appealed to 12 Republicans? I can hear the screams. There would be ActBlue accounts by the dozens to primary Obama.

It just never stops. And if Rahm steps down, they’ll just find someone else to act as the bogeyman.

A senior Congressional legislative aide called me this morning on background as follows.

We must begin to organize a massive and unprecedented telephone call in campaign for passage of healthcare reform, to begin at 9AM EST on February 24th and extend through the entire day of the presidential healthcare meeting on February 25th.

This senior Congressional aide (who asked at this time to remain anonymous), advised that nothing less than a citizen outpouring the likes of which members of Congress have never seen, will be sufficient to get healthcare legislation passed.

I wish that I had better news for you guys. It seems unreasonable to ask for more calls after you already spent weeks talking Congress back from a ledge (granted, without you the party might be pavement pizza already). Now I have to pass on that Democrats are still hanging ten on a marble balcony and only a few more items on your long distance bill can maybe save them from themselves.

For the most part constituent pressure only works at the margins, so our chances of a win remain slim. On the other hand we don’t need very many votes to wrap this up. At least it feels better than shouting at the TV.

Switchboard: (202) 224-3121. Tell your Representative to Pass. The. Damn. Bill. Tell your Senators to get behind a reconciliation fix for the excise tax and whatever else is holding up the process. Call Republicans too! Give them hell for behaving like useless obstructionist twits, and ask whether they plan to support privatizing Social Security and Medicare.

Guide for first-timers here.

Poll.

If you need motivation, read Kevin Drum and this diary at Kos.

***Update***

Since Capitol Hill is closed, try your Reps’ local office. Those of you in PA, MD, NoVA, OH, DC and NJ might have to wait until Friday or next week.

Goldman Sachs helped the Greek government to mask the true extent of its deficit with the help of a derivatives deal that legally circumvented the EU Maastricht deficit rules. At some point the so-called cross currency swaps will mature, and swell the country’s already bloated deficit.

Greeks aren’t very welcome in the Rue Alphones Weicker in Luxembourg. It’s home to Eurostat, the European Union’s statistical office. The number crunchers there are deeply annoyed with Athens. Investigative reports state that important data “cannot be confirmed” or has been requested but “not received.”

At this point, Goldman Sachs should replace SPECTRE as the global villain in any future Bond movies.

Leading House Republicans raised the prospect Monday night that they might refuse to participate in President Obama’s proposed health care summit if the White House chooses not to scrap the existing reform bills and start over.

In a letter to White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (Ohio) and Minority Whip Eric Cantor (Va.) expressed frustration at reports that Obama intends to put the Democratic bills on the table for discussion at the Feb. 25 summit.

“If the starting point for this meeting is the job-killing bills the American people have already soundly rejected, Republicans would rightly be reluctant to participate,” Boehner and Cantor wrote.

I know you all won’t do it, but this really is a gimme. Set up the room with a side for the Democrats, including nameplates, one for the Republicans, including nameplates, and hold the summit no matter what. If they come, you can have the summit. If they don’t, then you can have the summit without them, and can use the time (as the camera pans over their empty seats) to promote the positive aspects of the current bill all while discussing the only GOP plan out there- the Paul Ryan bill. I’d suggest panning the room a good bit.

And if the Republicans don’t take a hit in the polls for refusing to show up, and if the media does not rip the Republicans apart, then you all can take out a shovel, beat bipartisanship in the back of the damned head until dead, and bury it in the WH yard, and start acting like you have large majorities.

Time for Round 2 of Snowpocalypse.