Oliver Willis gets this just right:
One of the most annoying things I've seen in coverage of the Virginiarace is the near-mythic stature afforded the Rove-created “72 Hour Task Force“. When the polls showed Kaine up 5%, the drumbeat of how superawesome the task force would be was supposed to put fear in the hearts of Dems. And I couldn’t understand it. The Republicans ran a dedicated get-out-the-vote operation, they didn’t cast a voodoo spell. The way to defeat that is to run one of your own, only better. Mark Warner did it in 2001, and Tim Kaine did it tonight. Like the mythmaking of Karl Rove, this stuff isn’t so mysterious, and folks need to stop making it so that you believe the b.s.
The myth of Karl Rove is greatly exaggerated. He got his boy to almost not lose the election in 2000 and brought an incumbent war president to a three percent victory in 2004. The guy's got talents, sure, and he's been very smart about a few important things, but he's no superbrain.
Plus, his employer calls him "turd blossom"..
