Karl Rove's spectre looms large

Rove watch: President Bush's chief political adviser takes a back seat during a White House meeting. Photograph: Susan Walsh/AP

The Republican electoral wizard still holds a terrifying spell of doom for many Democrats.

It's Halloween tonight and the streets of America will be clogged with revellers on their way to parties dressed as whatever scares them most. This year, a lot of Democrats will be going as Karl Rove.

Rove syndrome runs so deep in the Democratic psyche that the more polls go their way, the greater the dread, because they know that failure will be all the more devastating. As George Will, a particularly acerbic conservative commentator, put it: if the Democrats can't win the House this year, they "should go into another line of work".

The experience of 2004 is seared into the collective party consciousness. On that heady election night, John Kerry's supporters were excitedly swapping speculation about who would get what job in the new White House, when the news came in that none of them would be working in government for the foreseeable future.

A creeping fatalism has since burrowed its way into Democrats' heads and taken up residence. In the dead of night, it whispers to them that no matter what they do, and no matter how unpopular the president, his policies and his war, elections are something that Republicans win and Democrats lose.