WHICH PARTY HAS LEADERSHIP PROBLEMS?:

Big Mac (Dotty Lynch and Douglas Kiker, Dec. 20, 2002, CBS News: Washington Wrap)

There has been a bit of grousing about DNC Chair Terry McAuliffe since the poor showing of Democrats in the 2002 elections, but an overwhelming majority of the members of his committee think he should stay as chairman. The poll of DNC members conducted by CBS News and The New York Times Dec. 9-18 found that 74 percent thought McAuliffe should stay, 15 percent said he should not and 11 percent were undecided.

In addition, McAuliffe is named more often than anyone else as the leader of the Democratic Party. When we asked DNC members "Who leads the party, they said: 20 percent said Terry McAuliffe, Tom Daschle 17 percent, Bill Clinton 13 percent, Al Gore 8 percent, (this response was given BEFORE Gore announced his decision not to run in 2004) Nancy Pelosi 4 percent, Dick Gephardt 3 percent.

If, when you woke on November 6th, someone had told you that the Republicans would head into the new year with Bill Frist as the new Senate leader--in a plotline that has at its center the undeniably odd notion that there's no room for racism in the GOP--and that Terry McAuliffe (aka: Clinton's bagman) would not only keep his job but be identified as the leader of the Democratic Party--his only challengers being "San Francisco Democrat" Nancy Pelosi; "Northeastern Liberal" John Kerry; and, soon, "Northeastern Liberal" Chris Dodd (after he replaces Tom Daschle)--you'd have said they were a day-dreaming partisan Republican crank. Welcome to Crankland. Posted by Orrin Judd at December 20, 2002 1:20 PM