Nepotism For Dummies

by digby

As with most aristocracies, the younger generations tend to be rather, shall we say, weak and this is likely to be an understatement when it comes to Little Luke Russert. Look at this exchange between him and proud village auntie Andrea Mitchell.

Mitchell: Pelosi here has proved herself to be a really tough customer. This isa politician who really knows where the power lies. She knows how to craft these coalitions, she knows how to get the votes together, at the risk of going against her allies and her own beliefs.

Luke Russert: (sagely) Absolutely…. On that point Andrea, it’s interesting, I spoke to a senior member of congress a few weeks ago and he said there’s a lot of tendency in the media to portray Nancy Pelosi as this very calm, San Francisco west coast liberal..

Andrea: No way! You know better.

Little Luke: She is the son [sic] of a Baltimore politician. She actually is really an urban ethnic Baltimore city pol, rounding up those votes, getting folks over to her side. And while both sides will tell you she did an amazing job getting those votes on Saturday, she still has a heckuva road ahead of her. What she will ultimately have to do is get the progressives and the pro-life people in her caucus to do is accept somehow what comes out of the Senate. She was able to placate the liberal members by saying “look, if we don’t allow the Stupak amendment there’s no way health care reform is getting through the house. Do we really want to allow a wedge issue like abortion to tank this legislation?” However, some people are signing letters right now on the progressive side saying “we have the votes to kill it,” Stupak says he has the votes to kill it. This is a long, long way from over Andrea.

Mitchell:She is the daughter of D’Allesandro, the longtime mayor of Baltimore and the sister of Tommy D’Allesandro as well, another Baltimore mayor, so she comes to it naturally. She’s got the genes

Little Luke: Absolutely, you know those tough urban ethnic politicians, those Irish and Italians, they always know how to round up those votes.

I dare you to fit any more conventional wisdom, obvious analysis and rotting, sentimental Russertesque tripe into one small segment. He’s like an SNL parody of his father. It would be cruel to make fun of him if it weren’t for the fact that he’s working for one of the premier news organizations in the world (such as it is) making big bucks and being taken seriously by important people. And it appears that he is not even trying to carve out his own niche but is going to actually carry on the useless, shallow beltway gibberish that made his father the mayor of Broderville.

.