A SEARING SYMBOL?….The New York Times’ Jennifer Steinhauer says that Nancy Pelosi has “emerged as a searing symbol of the country’s deep partisan divide.” Bob Somerby comments:
The notion that Pelosi ?has emerged as a searing symbol of the country’s deep partisan divide? is, of course, pure RNC claptrap….Meanwhile, can you think of a single Democrat for whom ?Pelosi embodies their raw antipathy for the Republican Party?? Is such a person alive on Earth? Funny ? Steinhauer doesn?t name any such person. And no one is quoted saying such things, not even anonymously.
The reason, of course, is that it’s solely Republicans who have spent the past few months trying to rally the troops with their laughable Pelosi-as-Grim-Reaper demagoguery. But as Steinhauer knows perfectly well, the truth is that Pelosi is only a symbol of partisan divide to the extent that Republicans have insisted on trying to make her one for their own purely partisan reasons. (Namely, that it’s all they’ve got this election cycle.) In the real world Pelosi has gone to extraordinary lengths to present a moderate face and a moderate agenda. Jon Chait reminds you of that agenda here in case you’ve forgotten it.
POSTSCRIPT: Speaking of Pelosi, did anyone see the 60 Minutes segment about her a week ago? I read a lot of comments disparaging CBS for “fawning” over her two weeks before the election, but it sure didn’t seem like an especially warm profile to me. I didn’t write about it at the time, which means my memory has grown dim, but it seemed distinctly unfriendly to me. Am I off base here, or did it strike other people that way too?
