Party waits on Reid

Benjamin Grove

Friday, March 10, 2006 | 7:24 a.m.

WASHINGTON - Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid's "war room" spokesman Jim Manley stood outside the ornate Lyndon B. Johnson Room in the Capitol on Wednesday, waiting for Reid to emerge from a closed-door political strategy session with fellow Democrats.

Asked if Reid would talk to the media about the party's message, Manley chuckled.

"Not if I can help it," he said, only half joking.

When Reid shuffled out, Manley threw his arm around the Nevada Democrat, and they swept past several reporters and into the Senate chambers.

The moment illustrated a question on the minds of political observers, including a few Democrats: When is the party going to unveil its agenda and tell America what it stands for?

Some party activists say Reid and the Democratic Party's other leaders - House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.; Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean; Democratic Senate Campaign Committee Chairman Charles Schumer, D-N.Y.; and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Rahm Emauel, D-Ill. - are blowing a historic opportunity to take advantage of Republican missteps.

The leaders have been under increasing scrutiny and pressure to engineer big Democratic gains in the 2006 election.

"In the past 10 days I have talked to four Democratic groups and they all had the same question: 'What's the message?' " said Jennifer Duffy, who analyzes Senate and governors races for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report. "Rightfully or not, that falls on Reid, Pelosi, Dean, Schumer and Emanuel."

Today Reid planned to embark on his second tour of traditionally "red states" to raise money for the party - and slam Republicans - in Austin, Texas; Little Rock and Hope, Ark.; and Atlanta. Reid in January visited Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Nebraska and Utah.

Reid wasn't talking much this week about what message the Democrats are plotting, although he has said that voters will know where Democrats stand by November.

Manley said voters know what Democrats stand for because they have been talking about them in the last year in Congress: strong national security, reformed health care, better schools, a smarter energy plan and more retirement security.

"It's become fashionable to say that Democrats don't have a message or that we're not united," Manley said.

"Under Sen. Reid we have been more united than ever."

But there is frustration in the Democratic ranks. Some are openly wondering why the party isn't taking better advantage of a series of bad news for the GOP: the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal, the Scooter Libby indictment, the slow federal response to (and Republican finger-pointing over) Hurricane Katrina, violence in Iraq, even Vice President Dick Cheney's hunting accident.

Fair or not, Reid is under pressure to help deliver significant gains in November, said Nathan Gonzales, political editor for the Rothenberg Political Report, a nonpartisan group that analyzes congressional races.

"The grass-roots liberal Democrats think this country is going to hell in a hand basket," Gonzales said. "And they are saying, 'Why can't we take back both chambers?' "

Now is the time to present the Democrats as a positive force for change, some in the party say.

"People need to know not just what we're against but what we're for," one Democratic governor, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told The Washington Post this week. "That's the kind of message the governors are interested in developing on the national level."

"We seem to be losing our voice when it comes to the basic things people worry about," Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., told The New York Times last month.

But recent polling suggests that Democrats may be playing it just right, message or no message.

A CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll this week said the Republican-led Congress was only a few points higher than President Bush, who suffers a voter approval rating of 38. The poll found 53 percent of registered voters would support the Democrat over the Republican in their congressional district.

"These poll numbers are about as bad as it can get for the Republicans," Nevada Democratic Party spokeswoman Kirsten Searer said. "That shows that Sen. Reid has been extremely effective in communicating a message of what's wrong with the Republican leadership we have today."

Republican leaders say that harping on the GOP is not a sustainable strategy.

"When you go to the ballot box in November, if all you are looking at is pure negativity from the Democrats, I don't think it is going to help them," said Paul Adams, chairman of the Nevada Republican Party.

Democratic leaders, working mostly behind closed doors, have been crafting a specific legislative agenda that was supposed to have been unveiled in November, then January, but it has not yet been released.

"There's no delay," Manley said, adding that Democrats have been focused in recent months on "drawing attention to the misplaced priorities of the Republican Party."

Some observers say Democrats are notorious for wasting too much time searching for consensus, only to end up with a muddled theme - or none at all.

The party doesn't need a "package wrapped up with a nice bow" like the Republicans' 1994 Contract With America, but leaders need to have some sort of compelling message, Duffy said.

"There's absolutely time" before November, she said. "But the clock is ticking on Democrats to offer something."

Other observers say the biggest problem Reid and Pelosi have is with the Democratic National Committee, headed by Dean. The media have picked up on a rift between the Washington leaders and Dean and his disciples in the states.

While Reid and Pelosi are more focused on picking up congressional seats in 2006, Dean and his followers have an eye farther into the future and are building strong organizations in all states, including traditionally Republican ones, said Jim Edmunson, Oregon Democratic Party chairman.

Reid and Pelosi need to mend their fence with Dean and work together on a coherent message, Edmunson said.

"They ignore this (rift) at their peril," Edmunson said. "It could be they don't have a message. It could be that they are not good at getting it out. The national party can help them in either case."

Others say Reid has nothing to worry about.

The notion that Democratic leaders are blowing an opportunity is merely media hype spun from recent stories in the Times and Washington Post - "the buzz of the week," said Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia's Center for Politics.

It ignores history because voters in midterm elections vote based on the job they think the president and congressional leaders are doing - not as the result of a bunch of political strategizing, Sabato said.

"People don't react to all these things like they are inside the Beltway," Sabato said.

"There is nothing the Democratic leaders can do," Sabato said. "It's the Democratic activists who are whining and complaining who could help themselves by shutting their mouths. They're distracting attention away from what the election will be and should be about - the president and Congress. They're just giving the press something to write about."