Dems are screwing up already

David Sirota

I thought when the campaign ended, we would all get a break from people lying about the Iraq War - and especially from faux "centrist" Democrats lying to us. I thought the strong anti-Iraq-War mandate of the election would shock the system into at least a brief few weeks of clarity and honesty.

I was wrong.

It seems that the "Yay Iraq War! Oops, Let's Now Pretend We Were Always Against the War" wing of the Democratic Party is trying to nationalize Lieberman's Nixonian model and apply it elsewhere. To understand what I mean, just take a quick look at what's going on in the race for House Majority Leader between anti-Iraq-War leader Rep. Jack Murtha (D-PA) and recently-reconstructed pro-war mouthpiece Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD).

Apparently, the DLC, Tauscher and Hoyer himself believe that the Members of Congress who will be voting in the Majority Leader race are very, very stupid people who have no access to the Internet and have never heard of Google or Yahoo. They must believe this, because it takes about, oh, 10 seconds online to figure out that, in fact, Hoyer led the charge against Democrats taking a strong position on Iraq, publicly attacking the House Democratic leadership for having the guts to follow Murtha's lead and get up the guts to challenge Bush on the war.

All of this is happening at the same time Hoyer is trying to position himself as the ethics candidate in the race. Granted, Murtha is no saint - but Steny "I Have My Own K Street Project" Hoyer now billing himself as Congress's new Bill Proxmire is as credible as Mark Foley chairing Congress's Exploited Children Caucus. Oops, I forgot - that actually happened, so maybe we shouldn't be surprised after all that this kind of up-in-your-face chutzpah is very much alive and well in a congressional leadership race.

The race is over. Hoyer beat out Murtha in the "leadership" race.

Not a very good start, Dems.

Update:

Here's what Sirota said a month ago, and I agree:

I'm working as hard as I can to help get Democrats into the majority, but the Washington Monthly echoes what I've been saying for a long time about Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-MD): he's part of the problem. If Democrats take the majority, Hoyer will become a very serious obstacle to those Democratic lawmakers fighting back against the hostile takeover of our government. If Democrats lose, Hoyer will make a run for leader of the entire party - again, not a good thing.

We shall see.