As Al Qaeda quivers...
On mid term election strategy, she sounded like she was warming up for the old World Wrestling Federation. ``You cannot go head to head with the president until you take him down. Take him down, make him pay, and then we can have a conversation."
On party unity, she sounded like she had what the Republicans have had for President Bush's term and a half: ``the full backing of our entire caucus . . . geographically, philosophically, generationally."
The House minority leader said, ``This is our moment. I can't answer for how anybody did it before. This is how we're doing it."
Pelosi said this, knowing how the party's dentures dropped out in 2000 and 2004. Speaking last week to members of the Trotter Group of African-American newspaper columnists, the San Francisco congresswoman said Bush's crumbling record on the economy and Iraq gives Democrats a chance to go on the attack in a way they did not during the overly cautious presidential runs of Al Gore and John Kerry. Every major poll taken this month and last shows that respondents generically favor Democrats in House races by anywhere from 7 to 16 percentage points.
``The way they've come at us in the past has been gays, guns, and God: abortion, gay marriage, and guns, and they've had some success with that with people whose personal interests are served by voting Democratic," Pelosi said. ``I maintain that's because they've not heard a Democratic economic message that addresses their needs. They haven't heard anything with the clarity that they need . . . With no criticism of the presidential candidates, I don't know if the message they had reached these same people whose interests are served by a Democratic agenda but voted Republican for president."