Conservatives, independents, and especially the Tea Partiers hate House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Centrist Democrats fighting for their seats, especially the Blue Dog Democrats, are working really hard in their campaigns to portray themselves as independent from the Democratic leadership personified by that San Francisco liberal, Pelosi, and President Obama. At the same time, their Republican opponents are working to portray those same centrist Dems as rubber-stampers for a big-spending agenda.
That is also true of Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin, South Dakota's congresswoman. But as Tim Sahd writes at Hotline, Sen. Al Franken doesn't seem to have gotten the message.
. . . Franken said, according to the Rapid City Journal, "but we need to be able to have somebody here in South Dakota who's going to vote for Speaker Pelosi, not for Speaker Boehner." ...
... State Rep. Kristi Noem (R) -- who already leads the Dem according to automated polling -- has attempted to link Herseth Sandlin to Pelosi in the past, and we bet these comments will end up in a TV ad in the near future. We also bet Franken won't be showing up as a surrogate in too many more GOP-leaning House CDs this fall.
This just highlights the problems the Democratic Party faces this fall in getting their messaging in order. They've accomplished a lot, but those accomplishments are tained in some areas, even if people don't entirely understand them. Franken's constituents likely want him to support Pelosi as much as Herseth Sandlin's want her to vote against the Democratic leadership. Herseth Sandlin's biggest job will be to keep the race personal and local rather than national, but maintaining that message might just be impossible.
-- Monica Potts
