Somebody should ask Robert Gibbs if he agrees with the assessment of a leading left-wing blogger that President Obama hasn't been "even half-competent in the White House."

See, every now and then, I engage in back-and-forth on Twitter with some of the left-wing bloggers. Sometimes it's pointless, but sometimes it's revealing, and this is one of those examples. I and a few others were tweaking Markos Moulitsas of Daily Kos over this October 2008 post in which, reviewing the 2010 Senate map, he declared John McCain "delusional" for saying the GOP would cruise to "three or four or five" fairly easy Senate pickups in 2010. Instead, Moulitsas asserted:

[O]ff the bat, we have 13 potentially competitive GOP-held seats, and few Democratic takeovers. So no, 2010 won't give Republicans 5-6 "easy" pickups. That's ludicrous.

Things will be much different in 2012 and 2016 when we're slated to play HUGE defense (defending our gains from 2006 and this year). Republicans can brag about the gains they'll make those years because chances are they will. But 2010? Heck no. At this pace, we're headed toward a 65-70-seat Democratic majority in the Senate by the end of 2010.

Yup, those are gaudy numbers, and it's never wise to count your chickens before they hatch -- political winds can change quickly as Republicans just found out. But assuming the current trends remain and Obama is even half-competent in the White House, we'll have little to worry about in 2010. Our majorities should be safe for some time.

Note the use of the plural in that last, "majorities." I asked Moulitsas if he still stood by that prediction, and his response was "That I stand by. GOP not taking Senate." Which may turn out - narrowly - to be true, but it's only one majority. A very different tune, these days.

But his more telling response was what he quoted in response to my question if he still stood by having 65-70 Democratic Senators by the end of 2010:

"assuming the current trends remain and Obama is even half-competent in the White House". Caveats didn't pan out.

There's that plural again. Kos, by traffic at least the most prominent of the left-wing bloggers, based his assumption of an ever-growing Democratic majority in the Senate on the assumption that President Obama would be "even half-competent in the White House." And now, he's basically reduced to absolving his own hubristic projections by admitting that Obama hasn't lived up to that standard.

Tough times.