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Ms Pelosi is a conventionally liberal congresswoman from San Francisco who serves as House minority leader. The quite conservative Mr Reid, who comes from a small town in Nevada, is the Senate minority leader. Mr Dean, who seemed headed for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination until he yodelled in Iowa, chairs the Democratic National Committee. Since assuming their positions after the last election, the three have appeared somewhere between useless and disastrous as party leaders. Individually, they lack substance and policy smarts (Ms Pelosi); coherence and force (Mr Reid); and steadiness and mainstream appeal (Mr Dean). Collectively, they convey an image of liberal elitism, disarray and crabbiness.
Indeed, liberal-elitist Pelosi's family owns a spa ranch winery hostel in Napa Country that keeps any and all unions away, as does her chain of family restaurants. Such a team player! But Weisberg hasn't finished with his analysis:
Ms Pelosi epitomises this problem. Here is a typical Bush-bashing quote of hers: "The emperor has no clothes. When are people going to face the reality? Pull this curtain back." She dismisses people who disagree as hoodwinked or stupid, though she is not exactly Hillary Clinton. A five-minute interview is usually sufficient to exhaust her knowledge on any topic. When Jack Murtha, a Democratic congressman, proposed a pullout of US troops from Iraq last November, Ms Pelosi’s first reaction was negative. "Mr Murtha speaks for himself," she said. But after a drubbing from leftwing bloggers and her anti-war constituents, she announced she supported Mr Murtha after all.
Which put her fellow House Dems in the position of being questioned whether they agreed with their House Leader or not. This was not appreciated by House Whip Steny Hoyer, who ostentatiously stood up in the well of the House and said he did not agree with Ms. Pelosi. Sort of a bitch-slap! Weisberg goes on to say let's not replace Tweedledumb with Tweedledumber:
Mr Reid’s flaws are mostly the opposite of Ms Pelosi's. A Mormon convert from a working-class family, he does not dabble in Hollywood politics. He voted for the Iraq war resolution and is anti-gun control, anti-gay marriage and – most shocking for a Democratic figurehead – anti-abortion. But as a leader, he is both colourless and erratic. His innate greyness is punctuated by spasms of random aggression; he has called the former US Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan a "hack" and President Bush a "loser". Mr Reid’s own pork-barrelling and lobbyist-courting activities suggest that making him majority leader would merely replace the Republican hackocracy in Congress with a Democratic hackocracy.
Among the lobbyists Reid got a lot of indirect money from was Jack Abramoff, and when confronted with that fact, denied that he was accountable and said that it was a "Republican scandal." Yessir, Pleassir, if you say so, sir. Finally, Weisberg notes that the smartest of the three has an Emotional IQ of about 10, as in ten years old:
Mr Dean is smarter than either Ms Pelosi or Mr Reid and clearly does stand for something. Unfortunately, in most minds, it is for incandescent rage and upscale socialism. Mr Dean has an unfortunate knack for making himself the issue. His injudicious comment about the Republicans being the party of white Christians was followed by his statement that "the idea that we’re going to win this war is an idea that unfortunately is just plain wrong". Such gaffes lead to endless debate about Mr Dean, rather than about how Mr Bush is failing. Building on the work of a DNC pollster, Mr Dean a few months ago took to referring to his party’s base as "merlot Democrats". With the likes of Mr Dean and Ms Pelosi in charge, this is becoming truer all the time.
As these three careen from wall to wall trying to craft a message, ANY message, for the mid-term elections in November, there is a lot of scepticism among the harder-headed Dems out there that this Troika of Airhead-Dimwit-Dunceyodeller can assemble coherent planks for the national party. As Mary Katherine Ham @ Hugh Hewitt relates with a hat tip to All Things Beautiful [and the WaPo]:
The Democratic leaders in Congress -- Pelosi and Sen. Harry M. Reid (Nev.) -- are the party's chief strategists and architects of the agenda, which they view as a way to market party ideas on energy, health care, education and other issues. They have held countless meetings to construct the right list, consulting with governors, mayors and just about every Democratic adviser in town.
"By the time the election rolls around, people are going to know where Democrats stand," Reid said.
But many in the party have their doubts. On Feb. 27, Reid and Pelosi appeared before the Democratic Governors Association. At one point in the conversation, Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack, noting that the two leaders had talked about a variety of themes and ideas, asked for help. Could they reduce the message to just two or three core ideas that governors could echo in the states?
According to multiple accounts from those in the room, Reid said they had narrowed the list to six and proceeded to talk about them. Pelosi then offered her six -- not all the same as Reid's. Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski said later: "One of the other governors said 'What do you think?' and I said 'You know what I think? I don't think we have a message."
Weisberg ends his piece with another "merlot" castigation:
But more important than what the three stooges do wrong is what they cannot seem to do at all, namely articulate a positive agenda. Voters have grown disenchanted with Mr Bush’s mishandling of the war in Iraq and the country’s finances, and with the evangelical tilt of many of his policies. But there remains a baseline mistrust of Democrats on security, the economy and values issues. For a sweep big enough to recover Congress, they need an affirmative message as well as a negative one. Democrats have to demonstrate they will not just cut and run from Iraq, that they see security as more than a civil liberties issue and that their alternative to tax cuts is not just to spend more on flawed social programmes.
Thus far, Ms Pelosi, Mr Reid and Mr Dean have been unable to develop such a pitch for the party’s congressional candidates. Not just a good message – any message. The "legislative manifesto" they promised for November has been delayed again and again. If it eventually appears, one can expect something benign and insipid. In 1994, Mr Gingrich had the revolutionary "Contract with America." In 2006, Democrats will have another glass of merlot.
I hope Chris Matthews has Jake Weisberg on Hardball, which is becoming fairer and balanceder[!?!] every day. Steny Hoyer should take over the House Minority Leader Job, IMHO.
As noted in my blog yesterday, Pelosi's choice for a campaign slogan is "Contract on America" which implies either a contract to sell out to the highest bidder or a mafia hit. Choose your poison.
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