Nancy Pelosi said Monday that "we haven't really gotten the credit for what we have done," and the Speaker is right. However, it appears that her party will get that credit on November 2, which is why so many Democrats are now jumping the liberal ship, at least symbolically, to save their seats. This phenomenon reached new heights over the weekend, with Mississippi Democrat Gene Taylor telling a local newspaper, the Sun-Herald, that he voted for John McCain in 2008. Mr. Taylor had heretofore kept that vote a secret, and perhaps it's only a coincidence that he rolled it out amid the re-election fight of his career. The 11-term Member added that he won't support Mrs. Pelosi for Speaker, another revelation considering his vote for her in 2009. "I'm very disappointed in how she's veered to the left," Mr. Taylor said, as if Mrs. Pelosi's ideological predispositions were ever hidden.
Mr. Taylor joins a growing list of Democrats who voted for Mrs. Pelosi in 2009 but now profess to be shocked by her left turn. They include Idaho's Walt Minnick, Pennsylvania's Jason Altmire, Alabama's Bobby Bright and Texas's Chet Edwards, endangered incumbents all.
Brett Carter, who is hoping to replace Tennessee Democrat Barton Gordon, has gone even further and requested that Mrs. Pelosi not even run again for the Speakership. "Voters in my district believe that you do not represent their values, and my opposition has little to offer apart from critiquing your leadership," Mr. Carter wrote in a September letter.
"I don't work for Nancy Pelosi, or Harry Reid, or anyone else," says North Carolina incumbent Mike McIntyre in one television spot. In Indiana, Joe Donnelly is up with ads opposing "Nancy Pelosi's energy tax on Hoosier families."
Over in the Senate, the prize for distancing himself from his party goes to West Virginia Governor Joe Manchin, who ran the famous TV ad featuring him literally putting a bullet through the "cap and trade bill." Apparently that wasn't politically far enough away from the Washington Democrats he hopes to join, so Mr. Manchin declared on Fox News Sunday that he would have voted against ObamaCare too. "Knowing the existence as far as how reaching it had been, as far as an onerous, I would have," Mr. Manchin said.
Remind us again why these folks are running as Democrats? that he voted for John ...
