JAMES TARANTO: Take The Senate, Please: Rationalization Season Begins.

Of late the Washington Post’s liberal blogger Greg Sargent has been working overtime to reassure Democrats that their political straits are nowhere near as dire as everyone has been saying. Thanks to President Obama, he’s no doubt been earning time and a half. But now he’s brought in a guest blogger, Paul Waldman, to offer a different kind of reassurance, in a post titled “Why Taking Over the Senate May Not Do Republicans Much Good.”

That’s right, the election is still 7½ months away, and Waldman is ready to concede (notwithstanding a disclaimer that “we should acknowledge that a Republican takeover of the upper house is anything but a sure thing”). He’s past denial and anger and into the bargaining stage. . . .

It seems to us that Waldman has set up a false dilemma. True, it’s probably safe to assume that full repeal of ObamaCare has next to no chance of becoming law while Obama is president. But given Republican majorities in both chambers, there would be nothing preventing the House and Senate from considering both types of bills, or from sending both types of bills to the president’s desk.

The House has passed dozens of full-repeal bills since Republicans took over in 2011, but it has also passed more modest bills, including one to delay the individual mandate tax and one to delay the employer insurance mandate. The president threatened to veto these measures–even though he had already decreed the delay in the employer mandate–and they died in the Senate anyway.

Suppose a Republican Congress sent two bills to the president’s desk–one repealing ObamaCare outright, and one repealing just the mandate tax. If he vetoed both, Republicans could portray him as the stubborn extremist, defender not only of an unpopular law but of its most unpopular provision.

It’s also possible that Waldman overstates the political unpopularity of repeal.

Especially looking ahead a year, as ObamaCare train wrecks proliferate.