Election 2010, Spin: It's All Pelosi's Fault

In a new article in Politico.com today, the JournoList shills for the Obama presidency are trying out a new spin.  Election losses this cycle are al Mrs. Pelosi's fault.  Here's a blatant effort by the now defunked JournoList hacks to deflect any sort of spatter on Mr. Obama's failing policies.  Here's the two lead paragraphs the emphasis is mine: 

In the home stretch of the 2010 campaign, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, more than even President Barack Obama, is emerging as the heaviest drag on Democratic hopes of holding on to the House.


In district after district, from Florida's Gold Coast to central Ohio, in the Ozark Mountains, on the Minnesota prairie and in retiree-laden Arizona, Pelosi's face, plastered on billboards, recorded in video clips and emblazoned on mailers, is casting a pall over her colleagues’ chances of winning reelection.

 As Jennifer Rubin points out in Contentions, using this additional paragraph: 

Conventional wisdom holds that midterm elections are referendums on the president — and Obama is certainly the central figure in the unfolding drama of the 2010 election. But if Democrats lose the House, it’s likely to be as much a rejection of the policies and politics of a woman who has managed to simultaneously become one of the most powerful speakers in congressional history and one of the most unpopular figures in American politics today.

Those are Mr. Obama's policies as well.  He spent all of last year trying to push them through despite their historic unpopularity. 

True, Pelosi’s demeanor is even more grating than the president’s, but the agenda she jammed through was Obama’s — and his villains are hers.


Certainly the Republicans are using her image and record against her own members. She, after all, has an approval rating much worse than Obama’s. But she is also a useful reminder that no matter how “independent” a Democratic congressman claims to be, he still votes with the extreme leftist leadership that runs the House. And it was she who refused to allow her members to take a vote on the Bush tax cuts, providing a vivid example of just what a Democratic majority means in the House. (I don’t rule out the possibility that, in addition to these factors, some GOP candidates are hesitant to go after the president personally with the same zeal they can direct at his ideological twin.)

But regardless of the number of posters bearing her photograph, the target of most GOP candidates is indeed the president. They are promising to repeal ObamaCare. They are promising to act as a check on the administration’s agenda. Make no mistake, Pelosi may be a useful foil, but the ultimate target is Obama and his agenda. But after the returns are in, watch the finger-pointing epidemic that will break out. You can be certain that the White House will be all too pleased to blame this on Pelosi.  [emphasis is mine, ed.]

I agree that after the returns are in you'll begin to hear a rising litany against her leadership and that the spin will blame her and "her policies" for the historic losses the Democratic Party will sustain on November 2.