The Knives Come Out
I have pointed out numerous warnings that the media has telegraphed to the Democrats that their leftward push by Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi was not going to garner positive press. The party's leadership in Congress just kept right on charging boldly left. Now the Washington Post flat out drops the hammer on Reid and Pelosi. The Post points out that nothing – not one thing – that the Democrats promised to get elected has been enacted. Some centrist Democrats are becoming very worried about what that means for the party in 2008.
In the heady opening weeks of the 110th Congress, the Democrats' domestic agenda appeared to be flying through the Capitol: Homeland security upgrades, a higher minimum wage and student loan interest rate cuts all passed with overwhelming bipartisan support.
But now that initial progress has foundered as Washington policymakers have been consumed with the debate over the Iraq war. Not a single priority on the Democrats' agenda has been enacted, and some in the party are growing nervous that the "do nothing" tag they slapped on Republicans last year could come back to haunt them.
"We cannot be a one-trick pony," said House Democratic Caucus Chairman Rahm Emanuel (Ill.), who helped engineer his party's takeover of Congress as head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. "People voted for change, but Iraq, the economy and Washington, D.C., [corruption] all tied for first place. We need to do them all."
The "Six for '06" policy agenda on which Democrats campaigned last year was supposed to consist of low-hanging fruit, plucked and put in the basket to allow Congress to move on to tougher targets. House Democrats took just 10 days to pass a minimum-wage increase, a bill to implement most of the homeland security recommendations of the Sept. 11 commission, a measure allowing federal funding for stem cell research, another to cut student-loan rates, a bill allowing the federal government to negotiate drug prices under Medicare, and a rollback of tax breaks for oil and gas companies to finance alternative-energy research.
The Senate struck out on its own, with a broad overhaul of the rules on lobbying Congress.
Not one of those bills has been signed into law.
As has been pointed out in comments, the WaPo is known as Pravda on the Potomac locally. For them to attack the Democrats – and give a strong voice to a critic of the Reid-Pelosi regime – is telling. There is going to be trouble for the one-trick pony crowd. (Palomino pony?) This kind of coverage is going to get much, much worse in the near future. Expect an outright power struggle for control of the Democrat's agenda to break out. (Not that it isn't going on behind the scenes already).
By Purple Avenger, May 5, 2007 @ 7:30 am
Pelosi promised me a pony dammit!
By feeblemind, May 5, 2007 @ 7:39 am
OK. Let me get this straight. The MSM has for years been preaching that we shouldn’t be in Iraq, we are in a quagmire and we have no chance of winning. The dems get elected and propose to do just what the MSM wanted, to get us out of Iraq. And now the MSM is turning on the people that are doing their bidding? THAT is too complicated for my feeble mind to comprehend.
By Quilly Mammoth, May 5, 2007 @ 7:59 am
I think this is much more an indictment of Harry Reid than of Nancy Pelosi. San Fran Nan and her Democrat cohort have tried to deliver the candy, but it is in the Senate where things…thankfully…have stalled.
By James, May 5, 2007 @ 1:41 pm
>Now the Washington Post flat out drops the hammer on Reid and Pelosi.
Washington Post has it wrong again. Nothing new here.
The real damage being done is to the Repblicans.
The Dem’s can point to the GOP in the Senate for
being obstructionist.
On a side note the Repub debate was telling; boring, but telling. I’m beginning to think it would be better if they dug up Ronald Reagan and reanimated him.
By Roy Lofquist, May 5, 2007 @ 2:34 pm
The WAPO may slant a bit, but it is still a well respected (perhaps most) institution run and staffed by conscientious professionals. The Dems’ letter criticizing Broder was exceedingly stupid. But then…
By Purple Avenger, May 5, 2007 @ 5:29 pm
The Dem’s can point to the GOP in the Senate for
being obstructionist.
Of course that’s because of the republican majority in the Senate right?