Our political Quote of the Day comes from House Speaker Rep. Nancy Pelosi who maintains confidence that the Democrats will hold onto the House of Representatives in the 2010 elections. We’ll know on election night whether Pelosi here is overcome with wishful thinking, delivering political spin or simply a cool and precise political analyst.
This comes via MSBNC’s First Read:
From Chuck Todd, Mark Murray, Domenico Montanaro, and Ali Weinberg
*** Pelosi on the Midterms: In an interview with one of us yesterday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi maintained that Democrats would hold on to the House after the midterm elections. “Take it to the bank,” she said, adding: “I’m very pleased with how the primaries have been going in terms of the votes that my members have received. Looking at the other side and who the challengers are, I feel pretty good about it.” Pelosi continued to make a distinction between how House Democrats are dealing with this election cycle versus the rest of the Democratic Party.
The accuracy of this is to be determined.
However, Pelosi’s contention makes some sense. The Dems have shown that if they can keep local elections still local and put up candidates that appeal to the center and independents they can win elections at a time when polls show many voters disappointed in President Barack Obama, incumbents and the Democratic party. And this is against the context of a Republican party that seems increasingly inclined to tilt towards the Tea Party movement or candidates who are in effect part of the country’s partisan talk radio political culture.
Once again, it’s a race to see who can strip off enough of the moderates, centrists and independents to create a coalition that is composed of more than political members of the longstanding choir.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.