Inside the Beltway, buzz is king

By Jon Ralston

Tuesday, April 28, 2009 | 2 a.m.

Inside the Beltway, buzz is king, especially when it comes to who’s up and who’s down. If the D.C. cognoscenti think you are vulnerable, you are vulnerable. And money flows against you. I mention this because conventional-wisdom-setter Chris Cillizza of The Washington Post didn’t list Harry Reid’s among the five most vulnerable U.S. Senate seats in his most recent temperature-taking of the 2010 body politic. In his list of top five seats, Cillizza named three incumbents — Connecticut’s Chris Dodd, Pennsylvania’s Arlen Specter and Kentucky’s Jim Bunning. But no Harry Reid, the man whose numbers everyone knows scream “vulnerable.” Why? Because the national and local Republicans can’t find anyone to say, “Yes, I can.”