Reid of the Ritz

Senator Reid, the Democratic Party's leader in the Senate, will reimburse his campaign fund for $3,300 that it spent on Christmas bonuses for workers at the Ritz-Carlton luxury condominium where he lives in Washington, the Associated Press reported yesterday. Which raises the question: The Ritz-Carlton? The Democrats, who tout themselves as the party of the common man, are rapidly turning into the party of the plutocrats. The Democratic Party's candidate for Senate in Connecticut, Ned Lamont of Greenwich, is an heir to a J.P. Morgan fortune who has spent $10 million of his own money trying to purchase a Senate seat. The Democratic Party's candidate for governor in New York, Eliot Spitzer, is accused by his Republican rival of having begun his political career with a $9 million loan from his father.

Senator Clinton, who seeks to be the standard-bearer in 2008, splits her time between a $2.8 million mansion in Washington that recently underwent an expansion and upgrade that cost an additional $900,000, and a $1.7 million, 5-bedroom house with a swimming pool in the Westchester town of Chappaqua. Senator Kerry, the party's nominee for president in 2004, lives in a $10 million townhouse on Louisburg Square in Boston's Beacon Hill and summers at Nantucket. The Rockefeller in the Senate is a Democrat who represents West Virginia. These columns have nothing against either luxury housing or prosperity, but at a certain point it is going to become hard for the Democratic Party's leaders to assail the Republicans as the party of the rich without blushing, or without a chuckle from ordinary Americans who follow the news.