Alternate headline: “Confirmed: White House actually trying to lose now.”

We don’t know the make or model of the car President Obama and Democrats say they’ve been trying to push out of the ditch, but at least we know what’s on the bumper. “Look, there’s, there’s an Obama bumper sticker on the car. We get that,” said White House spokesman Robert Gibbs in response to a question from CNN.

Gibbs was attempting to illustrate that President Obama is taking responsibility for fixing the economy.

That new addition to a metaphor President Obama has repeated over and over again on the campaign trail to sharpen his economic message was akin to throwing a softball at Republicans. They quickly swung for the fences.

Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin tweeted “classic admittance [sic: admission]….Um, that’s been our point.”

Heh. As Gibbsy said recently to GQ, “it’s hard to message 9.5 percent unemployment.” Speaking of which, I know Drudge and Fox are having fun with The One saying at a rally that the GOP needs to “sit in back,” as if it was some sort of veiled Rosa Parks allusion, but I think he’s getting a bad rap on that. That’s just part of his dopey car metaphor: We can’t let Republicans drive because they’re the ones who steered the car into the ditch, yadda yadda, so now they need to ride along as passengers while the Dems steer for awhile. As Tom Maguire points out, much as with the eternal Slurpee joke, Obama has used the line about getting in the back seat before, back on October 10 at a Moving America Forward rally. I don’t think he means anything racial in it at all; “great communicator” that he is, he’s just stretching this already exhausted metaphor to its breaking point. Good luck convincing Megyn Kelly of that, though. Exit question: I think the GOP’s doing exactly the right thing by not holding any big victory parties next Tuesday, but wouldn’t it be just a little bit awesome if Boehner came out at the end of the night … sipping a Slurpee? C’mon.