A DISAPPOINTING START. Joe Conason is right: The race between Murtha and Hoyer present two astonishingly unappealing options. Murtha is hawkish, corrupt, conservative, and a dear friend to the defense industry -- year after year, he's the top congressional recipient of their donations, and he repays them in full. His brave comments on Iraq were aberrational rather than characteristic, and his emergence as the progressive choice is evidence of some very short Democratic memories. Hoyer, however, is fetishistically centrist, corporatist, and at odds with Pelosi. His elevation is likely to make for a profoundly dysfunctional Democratic majority. My personal view is that this is basically an early referendum on Pelosi. Murtha is a loyalist, and a vote for him is a vote for her. That said, for those expecting the Democratic majority to last for a little bit, new wars will emerge, new issues will arise, and new progressives will be required. There's always the hope that Murtha has bought into his new anti-war hype and will seek to retain liberal adulation by applying the lessons of Iraq to the next proposed conflict. But given that he supported the war and flipped mainly because we hadn't fought it with sufficient commitment, it's by no means a sure thing that the anti-war authority liberals have invested in him won't be used against them as he decides Syria is ripe for revolution. Meanwhile, Pelosi's attempts to replace the qualified-but-conservative Jane Harman with the corrupt and unimpressive Alcee Hastings is quite a disappointment. While Pelosi's loathing of Harman appears to spring from California-related rivalries, denying her the top spot on the Intelligence Committee may nevertheless be a smart move. Not, however, if the alternative is Hastings. The Intelligence Committee is an important institution, particularly for Democrats who need to build up some credibility on these issues. A corrupt, disliked, party hack just ain't the way to go there. I'm with Charlie the Pierce on the idiocy of Pelosi's promise to run "the squeakiest-clean Congress there absolutely ever was," but she's proving the impossibility of that pledge a bit quicker than would seem necessary.
--Ezra Klein
