Broder: People May Agree With Reid, But He's Still A Loser
April 30, 2007 -- 3:32 PM EST // //
One last crack at David Broder -- promise! Broder has just told Editor and Publisher in an interview that he's standing by his column blasting Harry Reid for saying the war is "lost":
Broder told E&P that he was "astonished and delighted" that 50 Democratic senators "spontaneously" came up with the letter (adding that he was being "tongue-in-cheek").The columnist also said he was "not surprised" that his Thursday piece drew such a negative reaction from the 50 senators and most of the many readers who flooded WashingtonPost.com with comments. "This war is so unpopular and for very good reason," said Broder. "I've written many columns critical of this administration's actions in Iraq, and most of the response of readers to those columns has been: 'Right on.'"
Broder stands by his argument. This raises a new question: What exactly is Broder's objection to Reid's comment, anyway? Does anybody even know?
Does he disagree with Reid's contention that the war is lost? Broder didn't really address this rather central question in the initial offending column, and apparently didn't address it in defending himself to the E and P. Does he think it was bad because Reid was harming the Democrats? As he implicitly acknowledges in this interview, the public is basically with Reid here. My guess is that Broder probably more or less agrees with Reid's general critique of the war, too -- he certainly hasn't written anything I've seen suggesting the contrary. So again -- what, according to Broder, did Reid do wrong?
The only answer I can think of is an admittedly simplistic one: Dems simply aren't supposed to behave this way. As this blog has noted before, one common thread linking all the outrage directed at Reid is sheer incredulity -- a kind of flabbergasted sense of surprise that Dems would be aggressive on such a matter when establishment wisdom has decreed that doing so would be to court political doom. There was a time when a declaration from the Dean that you were an "embarrassment" and "inept" would have sent Dems scurrying back to their pollsters and hurrying to push forward more "hawkish" Dems to make the Democrats' case. Yet here Reid is, ignoring Broder's increasingly shrill admonishments again and again, and not backing down.
One last point: If you're gonna attack Reid based on the alleged opinions of anonymous Senators, as Broder did, you don't get to be snide and dismissive about it when 50 of those Senators go on the record saying you're full of it. That is decidedly un-Dean-like. And with that, no more Broder for the foreseeable future. Seriously.
Update: Media Matters unearths more evidence that Broder basically does agree with Reid on Iraq. And Atrios points out that Broder originally claimed that Senators from "both parties" thought Reid inept -- including the party whose Senators all said that they don't think he's inept at all.
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