And then: "Why couldn't we Democrats push to spread the massive government bureaucracy now concentrated in Washington, D.C., out around the whole nation, saving money and bringing jobs to America at the same time?" As I live and breathe, senator, what are we going to do, then, about the unemployed in Washington, D.C.? Set up another lottery?
The reflections of Mark Steyn in The (British) Spectator are in another spirit. The Democrats, he says, need new voices, and it isn't easy to find these, pace Ms. Pelosi, inside the party. "In recent years, both parties have so gerrymandered the House districts that they're essentially one big incumbent-protection racket." As for the Senate, "the wiliest party operatives haven't figured out a way to redraw state lines to their advantage."
Should the Democrats move in the direction of the partisans of the late Sen. Paul Wellstone? Yet the demonstration at the memorial service in Minneapolis, "posterity will record as the 'defining moment' of the campaign ... at which fist-pumping mourners hissed Republican senators and deranged activists publicly demanded that these alleged GOP friends of Paul demonstrate their loyalty by renouncing their parties and campaigning for his posthumous victory."
"To those watching at home," Mr. Steyn, who lives in New Hampshire, recorded, "it looked like hidden-camera footage from inside a particularly insane cult. It's a commonplace, especially in Britain, to hear the 'religious Right' referred to as a bunch of weirdos who are an embarrassment to the Republican Party. Well, the Minnesota memorial gave us the religious Left: They don't believe in God; they believe in politics. The Democratic Party is their church, Wellstone their latest martyr, and the campaign a crusade. They couldn't have been any freakier if they'd been speaking in tongues."
That is one man's view of what would happen if the Democrats went left. But meanwhile, we can all sit down and see what Ms. Pelosi recommends.