If nothing else, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs' recent attack on the White House's liberal critics demonstrates why frankness often backfires in politics. ...

Concise, memorable and all too true. I've long referred to the perfectionist wing of the Democratic Party as the "anti-gravity left" -- educated idealists who confuse the American electorate with the inhabitants of such enlightened precincts as Berkeley, Calif., or Northampton, Mass. They're living examples of the aphorism Bill Clinton borrowed from Voltaire about letting the perfect become the enemy of the good.