Profiles in Prescience: Michael Crowley

Apologetic.us reminds us of the prescient wisdom of Michael Crowley:

Profiles in Prescience: Michael Crowley | Apologetic.us: Michael Crowley, Follow the Leader: Can the Democrats survive Nancy Pelosi? The New Republic, November 25, 2002: It's no surprise that Pelosi is working so hard to dispel the notion that she's a liberal. Already, Republicans are painting her as a combination of Maxine Waters and Barbra Streisand. That's unfair: Pelosi isn't a wild-eyed ideologue; she's just a fairly typical member of the House Democratic caucus. And that's exactly the problem. The caucus was already to the left of most Democratic voters--and far to the left of the country as a whole--even before November 5. And now many of its members have decided that the lesson of last week's election disaster is that the party wasn't liberal enough. Pelosi may say her liberalism isn't her defining feature. But it's a big part of why she's about to get promoted. As Michigan Representative John Conyers Jr. of Michigan recently put it, "I don't think anybody's going to become the next minority leader of the Democrats that wants to go along with [George W.] Bush on the war." In other words, Pelosi was chosen in part because she's not expected to challenge the liberal instincts of the House Democratic caucus. Which is a pity. Because, unless someone saves the House Democrats from themselves, they could be looking at a long time in the minority...