Sizing up Pelosi: The New Republic does the best job yet in taking the measure of the new minority leader. The CW is of two minds on Pelosi. Obviously, she's quite liberal, which reflects the dominant belief (by party insiders, at least) that the Dems have to go left. On the other hand, a growing dissent, which found its outlet in Pelosi's challenger Martin Frost (and later Harold Ford), says that the loss in the midterms reflects a loss of the political center. The official message:

"She has got her beliefs," says [Pelosi's] communications director, Brendan Daly. "But we are here to win, and she understands that to do that you need to be in the middle."

TNR's Michael Crowley is rightly skeptical, saying: "For now, we'll just have to take his word for it."