Dems’ Massachusetts loss clouds Pelosi’s future

(01-19) 04:00 PST Washington - — If the late Edward Kennedy’s Massachusetts Senate seat isn’t safe for Democrats, is Nancy Pelosi’s speakership of the House safe?

The answer is yes, unless there’s a Republican landslide in November. Forty Democratic House members would have to lose their seats to topple the San Francisco Democrat from the third-highest elected job in the country, just two steps down from the presidency.

Even before a stunning Republican victory in Tuesday’s special election in Massachusetts rocked Democrats coast to coast a day before the anniversary of President Obama’s inauguration a year ago, political handicappers were forecasting potential House losses at just under 30 seats.

No one expects a challenge to Pelosi before November, but if Democrats are bludgeoned and her 79-vote majority in the 435-member House narrowed to single digits, a post-election challenge is not unthinkable.

“It would take a lot, but it’s not an impossibility,” said Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia. “If a party is shell-shocked, the members of the caucus are going to be angry and they’re going to ask who lost China.”

No one has carried more water for Obama than Pelosi, who time and again has pushed the administration’s agenda to House passage, only to watch it founder in the Senate.

The big test is health care legislation, the survival of which may require Pelosi to do what even she has warned may not be possible: force the House to accept a Senate bill that contains provisions that are anathema to liberal and conservative Democrats alike, from a tax on generous union health plans to abortion language that is not restrictive enough for a core group of Catholic House lawmakers.

Pelosi insisted Tuesday that “whatever happens in Massachusetts, we will pass quality, affordable health care for all Americans and it will be soon.” Yet even if she somehow prevails, the election shock in Massachusetts will force her and the president to sharply scale back their ambitions.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/01/19/MNGO1BJRB2.DTL#ixzz0d8Z4tJU4