Pure candy, as it shows just how well Pelosi’s team has already reconciled itself to the certainty of a thumpin’ in November. The surest sign of a beaten party is when it starts retreating into fantasy about having a smaller caucus in Congress, when it’ll no longer have to woo those fickle, impure moderates in the interest of, you know, governing. Lord knows plenty of Republicans have been guilty of that too, especially last year when the midterms were still a question mark. But now they aren’t, and with the buzzards circling, Waxman’s trying to look on the bright side. Good news, Henry: Your troubles will soon be over.

In an interview with The Hill, the Energy and Commerce Committee chairman expressed confidence that Democrats will retain the House, and suggested he won’t miss some of the Democrats who won’t be back next year.

“I think a lot of the House seats we’re going to lose are those who have been the toughest for the Democrats to pull into line — the Democrats that have been the most difficult,” Waxman said…

“We’ve been trying to get the Democratic conservatives together with the rest of the Democratic Party, so in effect we’ve gotten bipartisan support among Democrats in the House,” the chairman said with a laugh. “Now we’ll have to work on genuine bipartisanship in the future.”

Like Ace says, that last bit speaks volumes about how they’ve operated thus far vis-a-vis the alleged “party of no.” For your visceral viewing pleasure, via Johnny Dollar, here’s Democrat Pat Caddell warning of a “tidal wave” that’ll crash down on Pelosi’s and Waxman’s heads a few months from now. Caddell is a liberal these days in the same way that Andrew Sullivan and Bruce Bartlett are “conservatives” — i.e., they’re useful mainly to the opposition as ferocious critics of their own ostensible side — but don’t let that detract from either your enjoyment or the fact that he happens to be right. How right? Well, Geraghty notes that the DCCC is now being forced to defend normally safe Democratic areas like Philadelphia by plowing in ad money; meanwhile, PPP finds that in five key swing states won by Obama two years ago, his approval rating is now at least 10 points lower than the percentage of the vote he got on Election Day. Almost nothing can derail this freight train. Almost.