According to Washington Post conservative blogger Jennifer Rubin, the Democrats are doomed.

That's the takeaway from the 650-word piece Rubin published yesterday under the headline, “The Democrats' demise.” According to Rubin, the “far right has fallen on hard times” while the Democratic Party “as a political force” is “spent” and “surviving precariously on the potential for wacky opponents and fading star power.” By her telling, the time is ripe for “the mainstream Republican Party” -- ie, people Rubin supports -- to “reestablish itself as the responsible party of reform.”

This is Jennifer Rubin's shtick -- her political allies are always on the rise, and her political enemies are always on the run (a week before the 2012 election Rubin wrote that it was “possible” that Obama could lose Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania, Virginia, New Hampshire, Colorado, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Minnesota). The fundamental flaw in her latest rosy assessment of the GOP's prospects - which she of course does not address -- is the overwhelming, near-historic unpopularity of the Republican Party.

Only 22 percent of Americans approve of the job Republicans in Congress are doing according to a February McClatchy-Marist poll, making them roughly half as popular as President Obama, who Rubin claims has failed to grow the economy and pushed a disastrous foreign policy.

And it's not just congressional Republicans. Only 32 percent of Americans approve of the Republican Party itself according to the latest Gallup Poll, up narrowly from its historic low during the government shutdown in November but still ten points below the rating for the Democratic Party. Only 27 percent of self-described moderates approve of the GOP.

And while Rubin describes Hillary Clinton's commanding lead in a potential Democratic primary as evidence of the party being “stuck with a candidate of the past who was very much involved in the failures of the Obama administration,” her own paper's polling finds Clinton with strong favorables and an advantage over New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie in a possible 2016 matchup.

But in Rubin's world, it's the Democrats who are on the ropes.