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By The Hill Editors
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Posted: 10/18/07 07:19 PM [ET] |
The electoral tide is flowing for Democrats, but that doesn’t mean House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) can rest easy in the knowledge that her caucus is safe and will merely be augmented by new members next November.
That is why, as The Hill’s Mike Soraghan and Manu Raju reported on Wednesday, she has begun to sour on the Senate. House Democrats are increasingly frustrated that they will have few items from their legislative agenda to boast about as solid achievements when the 2008 elections draw near.
Pelosi used to say (way back six months ago) that the winds of change were blowing clean across Capitol Hill; now she’s narrowed her claim to say that at least House Democrats are passing their bills.
The level of House Democratic frustration was caught by the ever-outspoken Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.) when, discussing tax bills, he said, “Everybody says, ‘What can we get in the Senate?’ So we have to go over to [Senate Finance Committee Chairman] Max Baucus [D-Mont.] with hat in hand.”
Most voters do not distinguish much between the House and the Senate. But Pelosi has to do what she can to suggest that it isn’t her fault or that of her caucus members that the 110th Congress is so unpopular. Its scant public approval makes President Bush’s ratings look robust.
The Speaker knows that 2008 is unlikely to be a rerun of 2006, when no Democratic incumbent lost his or her seat. No fewer than 61 members of the Democratic Caucus in the House were elected in districts that Bush won in 2004.
Some of them, inevitably, are going to lose when voters go to the polls a year from now, and the Speaker wants to minimize the inroads into her corps. It is doubtless a relief to her, but nevertheless not a complete compensation, that she can expect those losses to be made up by gains in Republican districts left open by retirement.
Reps. Jim Marshall and John Barrow are in danger in Georgia, as are Reps. Tim Mahoney in Florida, Zack Space in Ohio and Jerry McNerney in California.
Across the country, even in these halcyon Democratic days, there are lawmakers living on borrowed time. And people living on borrowed time don’t like the sort of glacial pace at which things sometimes move in the Senate. |
