MB Civic

By Derrick Z. Jackson | July 26, 2006 | The Boston Globe

WASHINGTONNANCY PELOSI bared fangs to show that the Democratic Party no longer has toothless gums. On national security, she said, “When you think of women and defense and security, think of a lioness. You come anywhere near our cubs, you’re dead.”

On mid term election strategy, she sounded like she was warming up for the old World Wrestling Federation. “You cannot go head to head with the president until you take him down. Take him down, make him pay, and then we can have a conversation.”

On party unity, she sounded like she had what the Republicans have had for President Bush’s term and a half: “the full backing of our entire caucus . . . geographically, philosophically, generationally.”

The House minority leader said, “This is our moment. I can’t answer for how anybody did it before. This is how we’re doing it.”

Pelosi said this, knowing how the party’s dentures dropped out in 2000 and 2004. Speaking last week to members of the Trotter Group of African-American newspaper columnists, the San Francisco congresswoman said Bush’s crumbling record on the economy and Iraq gives Democrats a chance to go on the attack in a way they did not during the overly cautious presidential runs of Al Gore and John Kerry. Every major poll taken this month and last shows that respondents generically favor Democrats in House races by anywhere from 7 to 16 percentage points.

“The way they’ve come at us in the past has been gays, guns, and God: abortion, gay marriage, and guns, and they’ve had some success with that with people whose personal interests are served by voting Democratic,” Pelosi said. “I maintain that’s because they’ve not heard a Democratic economic message that addresses their needs. They haven’t heard anything with the clarity that they need . . . With no criticism of the presidential candidates, I don’t know if the message they had reached these same people whose interests are served by a Democratic agenda but voted Republican for president.”

She added that there were parts of the country in 2004 where voters did not “know anything about the Democrats except Kerry and windsurfing.” She said, “In the absence of a strong Democratic message, they [gays, guns, and God] play bigger. You’re down in Appalachia [Kerry lost Kentucky, West Virginia, and Indiana by between 13 and 21 percentage points], you don’t hear anything about how you’re going to get a job, how your kids are going to get a better education, or how you’re going to get health care. So the Republicans come in and say [the Democrats] are going to take your gun away, take their Bibles away. What they did was clever.”

Pelosi admits that the Democrats do not yet have a soundbite as “alliterative” as gays, guns, and God. Somehow the party’s congressional candidates “must own August” with variations of a still-muddy, six-point theme called “A New Direction for America.” The six points center around healthcare, gasoline prices, college costs, the minimum wage, Social Security, and the deficit. “We think economic issues can trump values issues when there’s a message.”

Part of the message, she said, has to include Iraq. The Bush administration, Pelosi said, was “wrong on the premise going in, wrong on the reception we would receive, wrong on the reconstruction and how soon Iraq could pay for it, and wrong on an exit strategy of mission accomplished. Wrong, wrong, wrong, and wrong, and they say `stay the course.’ ”

The problem for Pelosi is that, despite all the claims of Republican wrong-headedness, there is not enough evidence to suggest firmly any Democratic advantage on the war, and centrist and liberal Democrats disagree on how much to make the war an issue. While 59 percent of Americans told an Associated Press poll this month that they disapproved of President Bush’s handling of Iraq, 64 percent disapproved of the Democrats’ handling of it. While 62 percent of Americans told a Washington Post/ABC News poll last month that they disapproved of Bush’s handling of the war, an even higher percentage of respondents, 71 percent, said the Democrats do not offer clear alternatives.

Pelosi said that at $8 billion a month, Americans “can’t afford Iraq.” She said, “If the election were held today, we would win.” As clear as that might seem to her, a national embrace of Democratic congressional candidates is far from certain. Pelosi talks like a lioness. Unknown is whether her party will roar in November, or whimper once more like a cub.