In a column for The Hill, Dick Morris pretends to explain why Democrats face a difficult political environment:

Obama has a lot to do with it. But so does Congress itself. With congressional approval at 23 percent in the realclearpolitics.com average, the Democrats in the House and Senate have contributed mightily to their own demise. The Rangel and Waters investigations and the impending decision to let each keep his and her seat does a lot to undermine Congress' image. So did the deals surrounding health care reform as the public watched sausage being made in Washington. The spectacle of Congress voting on bills the members have not read adds to public discontent.

Notice what Morris doesn't mention? That's right: The economy. Unemployment has been near 10 percent for months, and Dick Morris wants you to think the Democrats are in trouble because of “the spectacle of Congress voting on bills the members have not read.” That's absolute nonsense. But it is, I suspect, nonsense with a purpose.

The economy's role in the Democrats' current political predicament is so obvious, it's nearly impossible that anyone -- even someone with Dick Morris's spectacular history of being wrong -- could be unaware of it. So when someone like Morris suggests that Democrats are in trouble not because the economy is lousy, but because of health care reform, the obvious conclusion is that he wants to mislead people. He's ideologically opposed to the steps that economists think need to be taken to fix the economy, and politically opposed to the Democrats doing things that would help their political fortunes. And he's ideologically opposed to things like health care reform, so he wants Democrats (and the media and the public) to believe that health care reform, rather than a poor economy, is to blame for the Democrats' political peril.

Morris's political analysis is fraudulent: It isn't intended to explain what is happening; it's intended to manipulate perceptions of what is happening. Either that or Morris is honestly unaware that 9.6 percent unemployment plays a role in the political misfortunes of the incumbent party, in which case he's so spectacularly unqualified to offer political analysis that The Hill would be better off setting a chimpanzee in front of a word processor and publishing whatever it has typed after 90 minutes.