Guest Post by John Cole
While I, like others, was initally confused why Nancy Pelosi chose to support Murtha, I have to admit that I am more than a little amused at the overblown reaction to the Democratic leadership race in the blogosphere and the ‘liberal media’:
Years ago I spent Election Day in San Francisco with Rep. Nancy Pelosi as she made her way around town. She was elegant, smart and popular, moving from restaurant to clubhouse to street corner in the Italian hilltop neighborhood of a city that is more like her native Baltimore than tourists realize. It seemed that her ambition, and perhaps her destiny, was to be a Democratic Boss in the manner of her late father, who had been Baltimore mayor.
If Speaker-to-be Pelosi is going to succeed as Speaker of the House, she had better learn—fast—from the fiasco known as the Hoyer-Murtha Race. She violated every conceivable rule of Boss-like behavior: she lost, she lost publicly, she lost after issuing useless and unenforceable threats to people she barely had met, knowing (or having reason to know) that they would tell the world about her unsuccessful arm-twisting. And she lost big: by 149 to 86 votes.
Maybe it is that important- maybe this will lead Democrats within the caucus to think they can now steamroller Nancy Pelosi, and maybe this has damaged her image with the American public. I am betting most of the American people, when queried on the issue, will give the same response my mother gave- “Who are James Murtha and Danny Hoyer?”
A snide observer might note that what you saw was just a real leadership struggle. Compare and contrast that to what is happening within the Republican House caucus, in which they just extended the middle finger to the public and elected the same exact leadership that was in place- Boehner and Blunt. No struggle, no debate, no chance for fresh blood- just a nice orderly succession in the DeLay bloodline.
Regardless, you have to love the right-wing spin on this whole affair- “Hoyer Humiliates Pelosi” is the typical response, and you can bet that a whole series of posts detailing the corruption of Rep. Murtha had to be shelved with Hoyer’s victory. Given that this is the same crew who, after being demolished at the polls on election day, claimed that Conservatism had won, that would be a pretty safe bet.
This was a leadership struggle, nothing more, and I do not think drawing any larger conclusions about whether or not the Democrats can work together makes any sense- after twelve years out of power, it is safe to say they are united against the Republican party (if there was a gaffe in all of this, it was Pelosi using the phrase “Truth to Power” in her remarks yesterday). Despite the best efforts of the media and the GOP to spin this as a terrible blunder, it will amount to little more than a blip, especially as the oversight begins in earnest this January.