It’s hard to read this statement as anything but that:

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has privately told her politically vulnerable Democratic members that they will not vote on controversial bills in 2010 unless the Senate acts first.

After a year of bruising legislative victories that some political analysts believe have done more to jeopardize her majority than to entrench it, Pelosi is shifting gears for the 2010 election.

The Speaker recently assured her freshman lawmakers and other vulnerable members of her caucus that a vote on immigration reform is not looming despite a renewed push from the White House and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. The House will not move on the issue until the upper chamber passes a bill, Pelosi told the members.
But according to Democrats who have spoken to Pelosi, the Speaker has expanded that promise beyond immigration, informing Democratic lawmakers that the Senate will have to move first on a host of controversial issues before she brings them to the House floor.

“The Speaker has told members in meetings that we’ve done our jobs,” a Democratic leadership aide said. “And that next year the Senate’s going to have to prove what it can accomplish before we go sticking our necks out any further.”

It’s true that the House has taken the first bite on a host of bills this year, from education to health care to climate change to financial reform, passing basically a substantial chunk of the Obama agenda, with little to show for it. So the Senate does need to walk the plank every now and again.

But consider the leftover items here – immigration reform, labor law reform (Employee Free Choice Act), gay rights (DOMA and DADT repeal), budgetary issues which include taxes, etc. How broadly do you define a “tough vote”? And what will the House then do while waiting for the Senate to act on all of this?

During the Bush Administration, my view was that they didn’t shrink from tough votes in election years, they embraced them. Because a “tough vote” can cut both ways. An immigration vote can really hurt Republicans in the fastest-growing states for immigration – California, Nevada, Arizona, Colorado, even North Carolina. A tough labor vote can really hurt the GOP in a swing district where labor is ascendant, particularly throughout the Midwest.

If the House is so narrowly focused next year that they’re just renaming post offices for 11 months, that’s not going to exactly inspire the base. Some smart guy up there in Washington needs to devise some difficult votes for Republicans, and employ them.