William Galston November 18, 2010 | 12:00 am

On Thursday, the House Democratic caucus selected Nancy Pelosi as the minority leader. A few hours earlier, Quinnipiac University released its latest survey, which sheds some interesting light on that decision.

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Two points stand out:

1. The share of people who hadn’t heard enough about Pelosi to form an opinion declined by 25 points from February of 2007 until November 2010. During that period, the share with a favorable opinion remained constant at 25 percent, while those with an unfavorable opinion rose by 24 points, from 31 to 55 percent. In short, virtually everyone who received additional information about Pelosi over the past three and a half years reached a negative conclusion.

2. This is a long-term development and not principally the result of the advertising campaign waged against her during the peak of the midterm election. By the time of Obama’s election, her unfavorable rating had already risen by ten points; by March of this year—eight months ago, it had risen another Ten points. Between March and November, it rose by only four more points. The inescapable fact is that whatever her strengths as an inside player, Pelosi’s public presence has proved monumentally unappealing to all except a small core of supporters.

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This decision was the victory of inside baseball over common sense, and no amount of spin can change that.

Allen and Harris finish their piece with a section that begins, “There’s no one else.” Yes there was, and his decision not to challenge Pelosi is hardly a disqualification for party leadership. Why on earth should Steny Hoyer have mounted a kamikaze attack against colleagues who would rather be the majority in a minority party than do what’s necessary to regain the only majority that matters?

http://www.tnr.com/blog/william-galston/79...

I feel that it will be very difficult for a Pelosi led caucus to ever regain the majority. I fear that President Obama will far outpace House Democrats in 2012 due in large part to the albatross of Nancy Pelosi.

I could not believe it when I read today that Nancy Pelosi will try to stay on as minority leader. After losing 60+ seats, she not only needs to leave the leadership, she should seriously consider resigning from Congress.

I don't care if the new leader comes more from the left with someone like Pete DeFazio, someone from the center like Steny Hoyer, I won't go as far to promote a Heath Shuler, but you get the picture. Anyone would be a better face for House Democrats.

We took a drubbing in the House, the Democratic caucus has been reduced to its smallest levels since before the Depression, this failure should not be rewarded with two more years at the helm.

Fairly or not, Nancy Pelosi has become the most divisive and unpopular figure active today in American politics. To keep her where she is just sounds like a death wish.

If Obama wins big in 2012, we could take back the House, but I really doubt that would happen with Pelosi as leader. We lost scores of seats on Tuesday just because of their association with Pelosi, and now we want to go into the 2012 cycle promising to restore this radioactive figure back to the speaker's office? That sounds like John Boehner's wet dream.

Nancy you are a great public servant and you have served admirably as speaker. But now it is time for you to walk off into the sunset and let others carry on the fight from here, for the good of the party.

Someone on Capitol Hill needs to tell her that this is not wise.

It seems that there is a lot clamoring to strip Joe Lieberman of his chair on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee and other assignments.

Reid's unwillingness to "strip" Lieberman of his post has nothing to do with weakness on his part, his hands are tied by Senate procedure. The chair is a Senate position, not a caucus one.

Senate committee memberships and chairmanships are assigned in the organizing resolution. Any attempt to change this resolution would face a cloture vote, which would surely fail.

The most recent organizing resolution was adopted in September so that Paul Kirk could receive his committee assignments. These are normally non-controversial procedural bills, and as was the case last month, pass by unanimous consent. However I severely doubt Mr. Lieberman would be a party to his own punishment, and would obviously oppose cloture on such a resolution, along with Republicans.

So essentially, whether you like it or not, Joe is safe in chair until at least the start of the 112th Congress, when it would be much easier to make the desired change.

If you still like to yell about it, feel free, but it won't get you anywhere.

http://money.cnn.com/

The withdrawal from Iraq will be completed under a Republican, George Bush's Secretary of Defense.

This in effect makes the Iraq issue moot.

Republicans will be without their favorite "cut and run" line, because it will be George Bush's man overseeing it.

They won't be able to repeat their absurd Vietnam line that Democrats forced us to lose that war, because a Republican will be in charge of ending it.

Iraq is taken off the table as an issue that could potentially harm Democrats or the Obama administration.

Gates doesn't even get to keep his deputies! He is essentially a figurehead. Where is the downside again?

Republicans are screwn.

I'm really looking forward to the prospect that John Edwards will never hold another position in government ever again.

No politician in the Democratic Party annoys me more or leaves a more bitter taste in my mouth than John Edwards, and I am really enjoying watching this scandal play out.

If these rumors turn out to be true, then it was a horrendous thing for him to run for president in 2008. How could he willingly take all of his supporters hard earned dollars, knowing that the exposure of such a huge scandal would be imminent? I mean it doesn't surprise me, but I bet it would be an eye opener to some of his supporters who think he walks on water.

And if its not true, well, I suppose this all couldn't have happened to a nicer person, and I wish him the best of luck in the private sector.

Either way, I hope he finds the time over the years ahead to spend time with his family, however large it may be these days. And if he ever finds the need to learn more about poverty, I'm sure his old hedge fund buddies will take him back.

Dodd can't do it nor can Feingold.

In the same vane as "only Nixon can go to China" it is only Obama that can lead a successful filibuster of the FISA bill, if he so chooses.

If Obama went before a crowd of cameras and declared that he would filibuster the bill, and challenge his colleagues to either stand with him or bend over for the telecoms and George Bush,(I'm sure Mr. Obama would be much more graceful in his words) would these Democratic senators deny him this request?

Would they publicly go against their nominee for President in order to accommodate George Bush?

Obama needs to realize that with leading this party comes responsibilities. He is no longer one vote in one hundred, he is the man who will likely occupy the Oval Office in six months time, and he needs to start acting like it.

Uncle Hugo needs an American boogeyman (scapegoat) to blame his problems on, he doesn't care if his name is Bush or Obama.

When Hugo starts his crazy rants on President Obama, do you think the cult of Hugo will still make excuses for him left and right?

The Obamites have been going on for weeks with their cute little "delegate math" threads, declaring the same thing over and over as though it was some new revelation.

Barack Obama will end the primaries with a nominal lead in pledged delegates. We get it, we know it.

Unfortunately for Obama supporters, party rules do not dictate that the nominal pledged leader automatically wins the nomination.

It is also true that neither candidate will secure 2,024 pledged delegates by the end of the primaries, meaning that SDs will be the ultimate deciders.

The SDs are under no obligation whatsoever to ratify the nominal leader of pledged delegates as nominee.

In a race this close, other variables will be looked at.

One such variable is the popular vote, the most democratic and representative variable available to us for measuring the true popular will of voters.

There is a very good chance Hillary will end the primaries leading in popular votes (all scenarios can be mapped out here http://www.realclearpolitics.com/horserace... ) and should she secure the popular vote she will need to go to the SDs and make her case that there is no better way to measure the will of the People than through the popular vote.

What is more democratic and in the spirit of our party than the concept of one man one vote?

The only reason we are having this conversation is because of the undemocratic and seemingly arbitrary nature of our current delegate selection processes. For example if we used GOP rules for delegate selection, Hillary would have a nominal lead in pledged delegates. This example isn't some secret "Hillary is a Republican" plot or some nonsense like that, it just goes to prove that these delegate selection processes are arbitrary. If Obama could close the deal and secure 2024 delegates, we wouldn't be having this conversation either.

It just goes to prove that the process is arbitrary and that the pledged delegate count may be diverging from the popular will of voters.

If this is the case, then Hillary will have the obligation to see that the majority of Democrats who went to the polls and voted for her are heard in Denver. The choice of the People should win out over the nominal leader of 50+ arcane delegate selection processes.

So all these threads bemoaning the fact that Hillary cannot win the pledged delegate count are moot, we are in a race to get to 2024, and the pledged delegate count is just one variable for the SDs to consider when the last vote is counted in this primary season.

Sorry.

Alan Keyes doesn't count.

The Clintons, as they are so affectionately called around here, have been battling the GOP smear machine for the past twenty years.

And just to clarify the OP a bit, on the South Side of Chicago where Obama represented in the State Senate, there is no such thing as the Republican Party.

That's just the facts Jack.

Whether they lie knowingly is not as clear.

A non-binding sense of the Senate resolution does not authorize or bestow new war powers upon the President.

In fact, this internal non-binding resolution is so meaningless that Senator Obama didn't even bother to show up for it.

Making something up doesn't make of fact.

I have always absolutely loved President Carter.

From the moment I read about his campaign I was totally hooked.

He was the first presidential candidate that I voted for to win an election.

Then in 1980 when his administration stood on the edge of collapse, he was stabbed right in the back by Ted Kennedy.

Kennedy waged a vicious primary challenge against the incumbent President that almost toppled him. And lets not fool ourselves, it was an ugly campaign.

It reinforced the media image that Carter was ineffective and on his way out.

The one image that sticks in my mind to this day is a campaign ad I saw on television during the general election where the Reagan people used footage of Kennedy's negative campaigning against President Carter.

At the time I think it was easier for me to blame President Carter's loss on Kennedy, instead of some weird twenty year long right wing movement that seemed to be emerging. I now recognize there were tons of factors working against President Carter, but that brutal primary challenge certainly didn't help.

As time went on and Kennedy continued to rack up accomplishments in the Senate, its a wound that healed considerably, and I am amazed that at his age he continues to do so much good for so many.

However whenever I see him in the news, I can't help but think about that 1980 campaign and the beginning of the Reagan era, just four short years after we thought we had disposed of Nixon and his cronies once and for all.

As the Edwards campaign continued to collapse into the new year, his campaign and his supporters are reminding me more and more of the vanity campaign of Dennis Kucinich.

It seems the cult of personality is just as strong, and its not at all uncommon to see posts extolling the virtues of Edwards as though he was some sort of messiah figure.

The trajectory of his campaign is following a similar path, especially now that Kucinich has dropped out and Edwards continues to turn in miserable showings at the polls. He has yet to win a single state, and it is doubtful that he will.

We are now at a point where Edwards has no path to the nomination and he is merely filling the sideshow void left in the campaign by Kucinich.

I predict that as the primaries slog on, Edwards support will collapse to a point where he no longer meets the 15% threshold in primaries for picking up delegates, and he will run around wasting everyone's time complaining about being excluded from debates ect. The fantasy scenario of Edwards playing kingmaker on a second ballot at the convention is nothing but a fantasy.

As he continues to perform poorly his contributions will dry, up he will be ignored, and he will continue his transformation into a latter day Dennis Kucinich in terms of relevance.

I suppose the only solace I take from the whole scenario is that John Edwards' time as a legitimate political figure is over. He wouldn't be a top tier candidate if he ran again in 2012 or 2016, however I'm sure Kucinich or some other darling of the far left will be right back to fill in the niche.

5% today in Nevada? That's just embarrassing.

Thus far he was only competitive in Iowa, where he lived for the past five years.

Which state is Edwards going to win in this primary process? You have to win some states if you want to secure the nomination.

I think the Edwards campaign is running on borrowed time.

It may be time to withdraw soon.

It really doesn't bother me that much, the only big story about him being there, will be the fact that he sued to get in the door.

But it is troubling to me that a judge can compel private entities to include someone in their private functions or risk being shutdown by the government. Not exactly a road I like treading upon.

It seems as though there should be no equal time law coming into play since this is MSNBC, the cable station.

Its nice that you're happy Kucinich is being included, but the legal rationale for this is what really interests me.