The American Spectator

p> JUDGE NOT br> Democrats have been patting themselves on the back lately that they have figured out how to better communicate with Red State America. You wouldn’t have known it on Friday and Saturday, when congressional minority leaders, Sen. Harry Reid and Rep. Nancy Pelosi refused to adapt the party’s weekly radio address to the breaking news that Pope John Paul II was on his death bed. /p>

“We had a plan in place for a national radio address that would have highlighted the Pope’s stand on social justice and equality for all,” says a Democratic National Committee staffer. “They wouldn’t do it. They said it would look like pandering, that it wasn’t helpful to their agenda.”

Instead the Dems went with an odd radio address by former Democratic Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell, in which he attacked Republicans for mulling use of a parliamentary rule that would allow the majority party to get judicial nominees approved by a mere majority of the Senate, instead of the 60 votes now required.

Mitchell, who in his days in the Senate was well known for stretching the truth to gain any little political gain, showed that retirement — and his time in Hollywood — had done little to dull his talents for prevarication. He claimed the Republicans were seeking to deny Senators a “voice” in the selection of judges, despite the fact that Democrats were blocking judges from getting a full hearing by the full Senate, as well as final up and down vote.

President Bush devoted his weekly radio address to praising the John Paul II, recalling the Pope’s heroic charge for freedom and devotion to the culture of life.

Democrats around the country were said to be angry that Reid and Pelosi wasted an opportunity to show the party’s faithful side to a nation that clearly would spend the weekend focused on the death of the Pope, and not judges.

Her Catholicism notwithstanding, Pelosi was especially adamant about pressing ahead with the political agenda, according to a House leadership staffer. “This wasn’t counter-intuitive,” says the staffer. “This was just being stupid and stubborn. It’s another example of where we are going wrong as a party.”

“This is another example of where we just don’t get it,” says a Democratic pollster in New York. “We knew the Pope was dying. We knew we had an opportunity, and we just ignore it and go ahead and act like the Democrats all those Red Staters think we are. We attack the Republicans for trying to save the Schiavo woman, and we ignore the Pope’s passing. Somehow I know this is just going to come back and bite us in the ass.”