POSTED ON TAP ONLINE: THE AWFUL TRUTH. Following up Scott and Ezra, Terence Samuel writes about Harry Reid and why he makes the Broders in town so upset:
Indeed, let us ponder this "ineptitude" charge a bit further, as it's come up before in discussion of Reid by elite commentators. Reid led the Democrats back to control of the Senate against very long odds in November. This week, he passed an Iraq war spending bill with withdrawal timetables -- passage that depended on Russ Feingold and Ben Nelson voting the same way. That was a Wedding at Cana kind of moment. Would that more ineptitude came in this variety ...
he real question is whether the obvious discomfort of some Democrats currently high-stepping in hopes of getting past Reid's remark is particularly warranted. (In this context it may be useful to recall the popular furor that failed to materialize over Barack Obama's recent "wasted" lives comment, despite war supporters' best efforts.) It just might be that the American people already know what they believe on Iraq -- and are much closer to Reid's position than the White House's. As Reid put it after uttering the remark last week, "Now, I said this is how I feel." His saving grace may be that those sentiments put him squarely in the American mainstream.
In the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC poll, 66 percent of Americans think the country is on the wrong track and headed in the wrong direction. And if there was any doubt about whether people had Iraq in mind with that answer, the exact same percentage -- a full two-thirds of Americans -- disapprove of the president's handling of the situation in Iraq, more than the 60 percent who disapprove of his performance generally. Meanwhile, 55 percent in the same poll say that the war is unwinnable.
--The Editors
