She trusts Steny Hoyer as far as she can throw him. That's my best guess. Not exactly flying out of the gate here, are we.
The choice between Murtha and Hoyer, on grounds of ethical purity, is not a pretty one. My guess is that, as with Hastings and Harman, Pelosi is interested in promoting the more consistently anti-war voices within the party over the I Can Wrestle a Buffalo! faction.
2: Sure, but in the case of Murtha, isn't he going to be out front on Iraq issues regardless of his titular role? That seems to be his major selling point (that and a fanatical devotion to the Pope...er Pelosi) but I don't see how the office enhances that selling point enough to offset the less savory aspects of his politics and history.
The only reason it's even a discussion is because Hoyer sucks too.
It's because Pelosi and Murtha are tight, and for no other reason. Murtha helped engineer her election as Minority Leader, so this is how she's paying him back. I'm not entirely sure she wanted him to win; I think things spun out of her control to some extent. But now she's stuck with it and we get to watch the sausage being made.
What I don't quite understand is why the liberal blogs seem so intent on backing a seemingly corruptish Congressman who's the most conservative Democrat outside the old Confederacy, but to Murtha's credit he was righter and earlier on Iraq than most of the caucus, and I guess chanting "DLC! DLC!" gets people inflamed.
(I'm changing my nick here because I'm getting freaked out by the myriad other Steves posting at TAPPED. Notice duly given!)
I like pelosi. If she wants Murtha, she should get Murtha.
I don't know much abotu Hoyer except that he's tied to Rahm Emanuel. That's enough for me to know that I'm ABH (Anybody but Hoyer).
If she wants Murtha, she should get Murtha.
It isn't her call. It's a vote.
I think that we should forget about the childish blame game at the Congressional level, and just dedicate ourselves to the business of government.
And maybe at the Presidential level too in a couple of years.
Personally, I'd prefer Hoyer. The DLCs have to be integrated into the party. But I'm comfortable with the fight; everyone should take every opportunity (certainly, at least once a month) to kick the DLC in the throat.
These are early days, and the next election isn't for two years, so problems of appearance don't bother me much.
6 goes to 4 nicely. Bg, is there a reason you that having ties to the #4 guy in the House is such a turnoff for you? Hoyer is bad and corporatish in many ways, but he's done more work for the incoming class than Murtha, Murtha shovels boatloads of money at defense contractors, Hoyer was an effective Whip, and Hoyer is vastly more socially liberal than Murtha. Of those four qualities, #1 and #3 are likely to be the most important to the people making the vote.
I can understand being turned off by Hoyer*, but I genuinely don't understand it how it is that people get so tied up in the Clintonista/Rahm/DLC thing that association with the guy who ran the DCCC is somehow instant death.
* Esp. by his "Democratic K Street" comments and his not whipping the bankruptcy bill, but I think Murtha's sins outweigh Hoyer's on this front.
I should preface this by saying that I don't know much about internal Congressional affairs, but I'm largely for Murtha because he's Pelosi's candidate. I want party discipline; it doesn't have to be crazy, I don't want people calling her 'The Hammer' but I don't want warring factions.
We can't call her "the hammer"? I'd love it if she had a cool tough guy nickname.
How about "the shark" or "the tiger"?
We can't call her "the hammer"?
It would be passé. I vote for Nailgun Nancy.
Oh noes! Not Reid! Reid, oh, Reid, say it ain't so!
Also, my understanding of the Abscam thing was that there's an hour of tape showing someone trying to bribe Murtha, and Murtha certainly not being offended or hostile, but repeatedly explaining that 'No, honestly, I want you to invest in my district. You don't need to give me money, it's my job to help you with that.' I'm not sure that this is worrisome corruption.
16 -- the tribal thing, you know?
The ABC report (linked in the update) depends on a single anonymous source "close to the investigation," so I'll suspend judgment for the time being.
And, you know, Abramoff's clients had a history of donating to Democrats. If they donated to Reid before Abramoff represented them, and continued donating after Abramoff represented them, I'm not sure how having contact with the lobbyist who represented them is corruption on Reid's part.
I fear I'm coming off as some sort of unhinged anti-Murtha person, but it goes beyond that, LB, and Murtha's questionable dealings go beyond ABSCAM.
On the Reid front, didn't we see that tool from AP try to pin Reid to Abramoff last time (before accusing him of following the law when invited by the Boxing Commission to attend a match and making money in the Las Vegas real estate market*)? What a shock that a Senator from Nevada would attempt to restrict the spread of new Indian casinos.
* That last one actually had something to it, as Reid left his shady local fixer partner's name off the paperwork but seemingly reported his financial data correctly, but the reporter had already taking a shotgun to his credibility so I tuned it out.
I'm not supporting anyone in this matchup until they've fully revealed the contents of their freezers.
It wasn't a serious suggestion, B. Everybody knows women can't handle power tools.
Nancy "the Venus Butterfly" Pelosi doesn't have that ring to it.
"Power Tool Pelosi" is nicely alliterative.
Nancy...Nancy Wilson...Heart...Barracuda.
27 - I doubt it helps the Democrats to call our leaders "tools".
We should just call her "The Shocker".
And then every once and a while, we could say, "You know, they don't call her 'The Shocker' for nothing."
Snarkout Steve,
I am not relentlessly anti-DLC. I actually kind of like Ed Kilgore, but I do not trust Rahm Emanuel. Anyoen who's followed my comments here (and I'm not Farber--I don't blame anyone for not having done so), knows that universal healthcare is my number one priority. I just don't think that the DLC is sound on this issue.
(I also think that the DLC is a little bit too tied to Rubinomics which tends to place deficit reduction above all else. I just heard Krugman on Al Franken's show, and he was saying that he supported raising taxes to hand out better benefits rather than cutting the deficit. Krugman said that a central premise of Rubinomcis is that you save money now in order to make better social programs affordable in the future, but the truth is that in the world of practical politics, this just allows loons like Bush to cut the taxes of the rich. Krugman said that there are certain Democratic -leaning economists who now regret that decision, because you can't assume that future leaders will be responsible with those savings. Giving out greater benefits now will get more people to vote for Demcorats who in the long run will be more responsible about deficits.
So, I say universal helathcare now. Deficit reduction later. (The bonus is that rationalizing our healthcare system would have the added benefit of cutting our total healthcare spending--or at least slowing its rate of growth--which would save Medicare money in the long run.)
34 - Thanks for the response. I think those are all pretty sensible policy positions. The thing that I'm having difficulty with is why the reflexive response is "down with Hoyer, up with Murtha", when Murtha is basically more conservative than Hoyer on basically every single domestic policy issue. There are in my mind one or two defensible reasons to want Murtha qua Murtha and a number of better reasons to want Murtha over Hoyer once Pelosi has weighed in, but it's the DLC-is-bad-so-get-DINO-Murtha part that's throwing me. Is this because the Majority Leader position isn't that important if you have a strong Speaker, which Nancy "the Bullet" Pelosi is clearly shaping up to be?
There's that, and also a sense I have, which I think is broadly shared, that Democratic Party reliablity on social issues is pretty reliable, while on foreign policy it's not. Bob Casey or Harry Reid doesn't worry me on abortion, because I'm pretty darn sure the party isn't going anywhere. Given the way Clinton, Kerry, etc. made fools of themselves before the war by signing up in the "I can kill a bear with my teeth" party, I don't trust the Democrats globally not to get stupid about the war. So I want more orthodoxy on the war than on domestic policy, because I'm less secure about it.
ooh, "The Bullet" nice.
Don't we want some deficit reduction now, just to lower pressure on interest rates, avoid getting too beholden to big Asian banks, and keep the dollar from collapsing?
I remember back when there was a budget surplus, there was an interesting debate in the New York Review of Books about the value of government debt. One point of agreement seemed to be that you want the government to borrow some money, if only so that government bonds can exist as a safe investment. Still, I have the sense that, well, there is something to Rubinomics.
Too easily parodied as "the Pullet"?
Why "The Shocker"? Because her eyes look like she just stuck a fork in an electrical socket?
The bigger question is who does Pelosi support for majority whip?
snarkout--I think that my off-the-cuff answer is that I want Pelosi to be strong leader, and I think that having a conservative Dem (who's still loyal to Pelosi) could inoculate against the charge that she's just some crazy San Francisco liberal. I think that Murtha could provide good cover which would allow her to push for more left-leaning economic policies.
I am not so worried about social issues. Right now, don't think that we should be concerned with enacting positive legislation to improve policies on social issues; I think that we need to worry about stopping bad legislation. In a Democratic Congress bills restricting abortion etc. aren't even going to come up for a vote, so Murtha's personal views on those topics shouldn't matter.
I don't know enough to know whether the majority leader position is not that important when there's a strong speaker, but I suspect that that may be the case.
39: Well, there's that, but mostly for the sophomoric double entendre.
A source close to the investigation says Abramoff told prosecutors that more than $30,000 in campaign contributions to [Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry] Reid from Abramoff's clients "were no accident and were in fact requested by Reid."
Didn't we already drive a stake through the heart of this one? He also paid taxes on a land deal! And went to a boxing match!!
Personally, I'd prefer Hoyer. The DLCs have to be integrated into the party.
No they don't. If by "the DLCs" you mean "conservative Democrats," then sure, and Murtha should suffice - the man is consistently right-wing on most issues outside Iraq. If by "the DLCs" you mean "those soulless weaselly little fucks who think triangulation with the fascist GOP initiative du jour is the only way to run a party," then no, we seriously do not. Not only do they represent a viewpoint which is morally and intellectually bankrupt, they don't actually represent a significant chunk of the Democratic coalition. We pay attention to them because they brought us Clinton (and are trying desperately to revive him in Zombie Hillary form), but they are an elite without a constituency, and that's precisely the kind of group we can afford to kick to the side. Given that over the last six years they've been useless at best and actively destructive at worst, I can't think of a better group to marginalize.
I should add, after saying that, that I really, really don't want Murtha as majority leader. Jesus fuck.
Let's just let the Republicans try to do ethics from here on out. Whenever they say anything, we can just say "Abramoff!" and that will shut them up.
And the Greens. They really care about ethics. That's why everyone hates them.
Ha! Ha! Silly fucking Greens! Definitely not ready for prime time.
The DLC has a constituicy, and it has money. thats not something we can kick to the curb, absent major campaign finace changes.
The DLC is good at collecting the bribes we live on.
Silly fucking Greens!
The DLC has a constituicy, and it has money.
It has money, not a constituency. The groups that make up the Democratic coalition are groups like unions, minorities, environmentalists, feminists, etc. - most of which have been shortchanged and shafted to one extent or another by a decade of DLC half-assery. The DLC doesn't represent any larger group of voters in the base of the Democratic Party. They represent themselves: a small cluster of Washington based moneymen and think-tankers determined to shift the party to the right for reasons that have long lost all political relevance. As for their money: their version of an opposition could have all the money in the world, but as long as it's bending over for shit like Iraq, torture and the "unitary executive," then they are fucking useless. Either we can win without them or we can't win at all.
I believe that the DLC strategy is deliberately weak. They discourage grass roots involvement and prefer to work with paid staff and big media buys. This means that they have to do a lot of influence-peddling to get the money to pay for everything, but since they've don't rely on the grass roots they don't need to care what people think on the issues. In turn, if the Democrats stay weak they can continue to say "We have to move to the right." It's a really toxic package.
Most of them are more committed to their centrist ideology than the Democratic Party. They claim to be political realists, but actually they'd rather lose than win with liberal candidates.
And they get paid, win or lose.
Eh. This is the kind of inside baseball where I have opinions, but no faith that I really know what's going on.
