This news is partly good. Nancy Pelosi has dropped her bid for Alcee Hastings to chair the House Intelligence Committee.
It’s unclear who she will now support, but it seems to me that Jane Harman must be the only genuine alternative and that moving to another potential chair could be quite politically dangerous for the new Speaker.
The failure yet to publicly support Harman means Pelosi is extracting a price from Harman.
One of the things Pelosi and others should be asking Harman to do is to become one of the leading Democrats to articulate a “new narrative” on the Middle East and to get out of the box that any broad gains on getting a new order in place in the region automatically means a net loss for Israel.
Harman would be wise to do this.
Just met my first TWN reader at a blog gathering at Cafe Central in Vienna. There now.
More later.
— Steve Clemons
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