Nancy Pelosi -- Should she maintain a leadership position for the dems?

One issue, one mind, one digit....

Pelosi backed off early about impeachment proceedings.

Will Nancy Pelosi have the votes to become the next House speaker? It certainly seems so, despite a lot of smoke and bluff from her detractors.

For starters, it is dawning on the newly elected House Democrats, most of whom are progressives, that the hardcore anti-Pelosi opposition is comprised of men who want to push the party to the center.

The hashtag #FiveWhiteGuys nicely sums up what’s at work. The white guys in question are Reps. Seth Moulton of Massachusetts, Tim Ryan of Ohio, Ed Perlmutter of Colorado, Kurt Schrader of Oregon and Bill Foster of Illinois. They want a party that has more appeal to the middle.

But the 2018 election was all about grassroots energy, women’s leadership and Democrats running as pocketbook progressives flipping House seats. So, why would the Democratic caucus want to displace a leader who is effective and progressive, as well as female?

According to NYT's count....if all 16 opposed to Pelosi vote against her, she's out.

Brand X wrote:

According to NYT's count....if all 16 opposed to Pelosi vote against her, she's out.

That's not true. Gingrich and Boehner were both chosen speaker with less than 218 votes....

Those are fitting names to be placed by the establishment drone that is Pelosi.

Anyone who closely follows House politics knows that Pelosi is the most skilled Democratic leader since Tip O’Neill, maybe even better. That’s why the Republicans keep demonizing her.

Pelosi was brilliant holding the caucus together under President Barack Obama to get the Affordable Care Act passed, and even more brilliant in opposition, making sure the Republican Congress didn’t kill it. She was superb at organizing the caucus last year so that not a single Democrat broke ranks and voted for the Trump tax bill, as dozens had voted for Bush and Reagan tax cuts.

Pelosi was also masterful at keeping Democratic House candidates focused on bread-and-butter issues such as health care, prescription drug costs, Social Security, jobs and wages, and making sure that Democrats did not fall into the Trump trap of leading with identity politics.

Thanks to this strategy, not only did at least 37 Democrats flip Republican House seats ― many of them in improbable places ― but several African Americans took Republican seats in majority white districts by staying focused on pocketbook issues.

What Pelosi realized, however, was that the very breadth of the skepticism toward her afforded her an opportunity. She didn’t have to convince either moderates or progressives that she was their ideal choice. She only had to convince each group of would-be rebels that the other was worse.

The first move in that strategy occurred last Thursday night when Pelosi met with Representative Pramila Jayapal, the incoming co-chair of the House Progressive Caucus. Jayapal had every reason to oppose Pelosi’s return to the speakership. The Seattle congresswoman is working on legislation to abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ice); she has already voted to impeach Trump. Pelosi has mocked both causes on the record. “I have those who want to be for impeachment and for abolishing ice,” she told Robert Draper of The New York Times Magazine this week. “Two really winning issues for us, right? In the districts we have to win? I don’t even think they’re the right thing to do.”

But Jayapal left Pelosi’s office with a commitment that Progressive Caucus members would enjoy better committee assignments and more say over legislation. And in return, she not only announced her support for Pelosi as speaker, but, according to Politico, also called the influential activist groups MoveOn and Indivisible, which quickly declared their support for Pelosi, too.

How did these progressive hard-liners justify supporting Pelosi, whose history of ideological compromise and big-donor fund-raising represents much of what they despise about the modern Democratic Party? They said her opponents were worse. Jayapal told Politico that the “drive” by party moderates to depose Pelosi “is not going to take us in the direction that we should go. It’s going to be the opposite of what the election really told us, which is a much more diverse, progressive, bold agenda.” MoveOn tweeted that “Dems must reject attempts to defeat” Pelosi “and move caucus to the right.” Indivisible declared, “We shouldn’t let a small group of white, moderate men sabotage her.” On Monday, Ocasio-Cortez—who had refrained from endorsing Pelosi during the campaign—justified her support in identical terms. “Out of the field, I would say that she is the most progressive candidate,” Ocasio-Cortez announced on Instagram. “All of the rebellion for the speakership are challenges to her right.”

It was a self-fulfilling prophecy. After the 2016 elections, 63 House Democrats had voted to dump Pelosi as speaker. But on Monday, after the Progressive Caucus’s endorsement of Pelosi, only 16 (11 sitting members and five who have just been elected) signed an open letter demanding “new leadership.” As damaging as the small number was the composition. Thirteen of the 16 were white males. Of the 11 sitting members, according to govtrack.us, 10 had a more conservative voting record than the average House Democrat in 2017. Many had a history of opposing abortion or gun control.

The moderate rebels grasped this liability. They knew that, on their own, they could not win over a caucus composed largely of progressives, women, and people of color. By Monday, their hopes for ideological jujitsu rested in large measure on Marcia Fudge, an African American representative from Cleveland who had called for “acknowledging the fact that the Democratic Party is becoming more young, more black, and more brown and letting that be reflected in our leadership.” Fudge had also slammed Pelosi as “a very wealthy person” who “raises a lot of money from a lot of other wealthy people.” Two of the ringleaders of the moderate revolt, Tim Ryan and Seth Moulton, were publicly boosting Fudge, who last week told The Washington Post, “I’ve been overwhelmed by the amount of support I’ve received.”



But that supposedly overwhelming support didn’t include a public endorsement by a single member of Fudge’s own Congressional Black Caucus. And on Tuesday night, after being named to lead a new House subcommittee to combat voter suppression, Fudge threw her support behind Pelosi, denying moderates the progressive fig leaf they desperately needed. Soon after Fudge’s announcement, The Washington Post’s Dave Weigel tweeted, “A quick update on Seth Moulton’s quest to block Pelosi from the speaker’s gavel.” Below it was a gif of a cartoon character who steps on a succession of different rakes, each of which pops up and slams him in the face.

This is why Pelosi deserves to be speaker again: She possesses the skills that the job requires. She may be a lackluster orator who, according to polls, lacks widespread support even among grassroots Democrats. But when it comes to outmaneuvering her opponents inside the Capitol’s marble walls, no one in her party even comes close.

These emerging tensions foreshadow potential problems for the next Congress—and they could come into full view as soon as Democrats hold their leadership elections on November 28. As many as 20 Democrats currently oppose Pelosi for speaker of the House, promising to vote for new leadership in the caucus’s internal elections next week. More than 100 are either publicly undecided or haven’t given clear answers about where they stand. That includes Ocasio-Cortez, who still hasn’t said whether she’ll vote against Pelosi.

Even if they end up backing Pelosi, the new progressives’ criticism of their own party—and their push for reforms—is sure to continue in the coming months, as House Democrats begin prioritizing issues and introducing new legislation. But as their ambitions grow, so, too, may some Democrats’ fears that the newcomers’ zealousness is a liability.

“We do have the majority, but it’s a slim majority,” said one Democratic House staffer. “So [if] you have a couple people who oppose something, you’re gonna have trouble.”

To people whose main reference point for politics is the late Obama years, the 2016 presidential campaign, and the post-Bernie Sanders blossoming of left-wing politics in the United States, Nancy Pelosi seems — and, indeed, is — an establishment figure.

But for those whose political horizons go back a bit longer, she stands out as the exemplary progressive among powerful Democrats.

She had a role in stiffening President Obama’s spine after Scott Brown threw the future of the Affordable Care Act into doubt, and her opposition to the Iraq War came at a time when the party’s other legislative leaders (Reps. Tom Daschle and Dick Gephardt, Sen. Harry Reid) and presidential aspirants (John Kerry, John Edwards, Hillary Clinton) were backing it.

But more fundamentally, her reputation as a shrewd and effective leader dates back to the huge fight over privatizing Social Security in the mid-aughts. At the time, the Democratic Party’s fundamental political position looked more precarious — and Pelosi successfully held her party together against chipping away at one of the greatest party achievements in American history.

All this helps explain why the anti-Pelosi sentiment is among a fairly marginal group of centrist Democrats who are completely detached from the anti-establishment movement on the left.

On Monday, Ocasio-Cortez—who had refrained from endorsing Pelosi during the campaign—justified her support in identical terms. “Out of the field, I would say that she is the most progressive candidate,” Ocasio-Cortez announced on Instagram. “All of the rebellion for the speakership are challenges to her right.”

Incoming Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.) announced her support for Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) under one condition: that Pelosi continue to stand for progressive values.

Ocasio-Cortez expressed her worry that the party is tilting toward the right, hinting that Pelosi is the Democrats’ best bet at remaining progressive.

“I agree that our party should, and must, evolve our leadership,” she said in a series of tweets Wednesday. “But changed leadership should reflect an actual, evolved mission; namely, an increased commitment to the middle + working class electorate that put us here. Otherwise it’s a just new figure with the same problems.”

Ocasio-Cortez’s push to make Congress more progressive encompasses efforts to oust some of the more conservative Democratic members of Congress.

Quote:

“Long story short, I need you to run for office,” she said on a call Saturday to some 700 progressive activists. “We all need to run at all levels of government,

but I really hope that many of you join me here in Congress.”

The election for speaker will take place in the new year, after the new congressional class is in place. Democrats picked up nearly 40 seats in the House and reclaimed control of the chamber. The odds that Pelosi, currently the House minority leader, will become speaker again are high, especially after Rep. Marcia Fudge (D-Ohio) said she wouldn’t challenge Pelosi for the job. After some early resistance from a handful of Democrats, some critics like Rep. Brian Higgins (N.Y.) have changed their tune and decided to back Pelosi.

progressive activists. “We all need to run at all levels of government, .

But more fundamentally, her reputation as a shrewd and effective leader dates back to the huge fight over privatizing Social Security in the mid-aughts. At the time, the Democratic Party’s fundamental political position looked more precarious — and Pelosi successfully held her party together against chipping away at one of the greatest party achievements in American history.

Nancy Pelosi was one of few Members of Congress marching in the March on Washington for Gay and Lesbian rights in 1987. She had only been in Congress for a few months.

Remarkable how first-term congresswoman Nancy Pelosi (1987) resembles freshman Congresswomen of today.

There are plenty of reasons to admire Pelosi and support her nomination for speaker that have nothing to do with gender. She was instrumental in passing the Affordable Care Act, she has an unparalleled knack for whipping votes and knowing her own caucus, she’s a tireless and reliably bankable fundraiser, and she is one of the more progressive Democrats in Congress, more liberal than the vast majority of those who’ve publicly opposed her. There are also many good reasons to want someone different at the helm. She’s not a great public speaker—I shudder at the memory of her rousing election-night invocation, “Let’s hear it … for pre-existing medical conditions!” She seems uncomfortable with, if not downright peeved by, the ouster of long-serving Democrats by younger, more progressive politicians. She has refused to make the protection of abortion rights a foundational pillar in the party’s congressional platform. And her maddening postelection focus on bipartisanship and “common ground” is a poor match for both the urgent threats an increasingly racist and undemocratic Republican Party poses to American society and the anti-Trump furor that produced the blue wave that will likely put her back in the speaker’s chair.

These reasonable anti-Pelosi arguments bear no resemblance to the reasons put forward by Democrats in Congress who want her gone. Their opposition to the longtime leader stems mostly from the fact that she’s unpopular with moderates between the coasts—due, in large part, to the GOP’s relentless assault on her character. When legislators like Rep. Seth Moulton and Rep. Tim Ryan say they want a more moderate face for the party, they’re not only responding to Pelosi’s left-wing voting record, which is very much in line with the opinions of Democratic voters nationwide. They’re also capitulating to the sexist caricature Republicans have marshaled against her.

These reasonable anti-Pelosi arguments bear no resemblance to the reasons put forward by Democrats in Congress who want her gone. Their opposition to the longtime leader stems mostly from the fact that she’s unpopular with moderates between the coasts—due, in large part, to the GOP’s relentless assault on her character.

Flanked by newly elected freshman lawmakers Friday, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi revealed the Democratic Party’s first piece of legislation for 2019: a package of voting rights, campaign finance and ethics reforms that is meant to help restore integrity in government, one of the party’s key campaign promises in the 2018 midterm elections.

The story of how the bill came to life shows how Democrats have long prepared for this moment to push a new set of reforms to change the way Washington works.

Rep. Barbara Lee will be joining the House Democratic leadership team, filling a key void for the caucus after its elections earlier this week left the group without a woman of color in the top ranks.

Lee is expected to fill a new position being created by Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi to oversee the Steering and Policy Committee, the panel that determines committee assignments for Democrats. Pelosi’s decision expands leadership of the panel from two co-chairs to three.

The decision to elevate Lee comes as a group of House Democrats, disappointed by both Lee’s narrow loss in the race for caucus chair earlier this week and that lack of a woman of color in leadership, was planning to ask Pelosi to do just that.

Pelosi is recommending Lee, a liberal stalwart from California’s East Bay, to serve alongside Reps. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) and Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.), the panel’s two current leaders. Lee is currently a vice-chair of the committee.

The committee has to officially vote to approve Pelosi’s recommendations, but it is expected to do so soon.

“The leaders and members of the Steering and Policy Committee reflect the diversity, dynamism and integrity of our historic new House Democratic Majority,” Pelosi said in a statement obtained by POLITICO Friday evening.

“As a leading African American woman with a place at the decision table, the appointment of Congresswoman Lee is even more meaningful as we mark the birthday of her friend: the trailblazing Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm.”

Pelosi’s recommendations cap a whirlwind week for Democrats as current and incoming members met to select the leadership team that will take them into the majority next year. Pelosi overwhelming won the Democratic nomination for speaker on Wednesday and must win 218 votes on the House floor Jan. 3.

The caucus also picked a slew of other leaders as Democrats prepare to welcome their most diverse freshmen class in history. But as the week came to a close there was one glaring oversight to its members — not one woman of color would be representing Democrats in leadership.

“A number of us as women of color are saying there needs to be a leadership role created for Barbara Lee and we need to have a woman of color in a role in leadership,” Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) said in an interview Thursday. “I really believe that’s critical and I think it’s a problem that we don’t.”

The Democrats were planning to ask Pelosi to find a home for Lee on the leadership team, including the possibility of creating a new Steering co-chair in the coming days. But Pelosi beat them to the punch, offering Lee the position during a one-on-one meeting in her office Friday.

Before Pelosi’s announcement, several members said it was the right thing to do, noting Pelosi created a new job for Rep. David Cicilline (D-R.I.). The move allowed Cicilline to find a landing spot in leadership while dropping his bid against Rep. Ben Ray Lujan (D-N.M.) for assistant Democratic leader.

Cicilline was unanimously elected chairman to oversee a policy committee that already has three co-chairs. This Congress, Cicilline served as one of the three co-chairs on that panel, the Democratic Policy and Communications Committee.

Lee backers also said her appointment would help with the optics of a caucus that boasts about its diversity — there will be two African-American men, several women, a Latino, an LGBT member and an Asian-American man on next year’s team — yet wasn’t going to have one African-American, Latina or Asian woman in their top ranks.

“The women of this country, anchored by the black women of this country, put Democrats in office,” said Rep. Lois Frankel (D-Fla.), a Lee backer. “I feel like our top leadership should reflect the diversity of these people.”

Even with the decision to appoint Lee, her job as steering co-chair is much more behind the scenes compared to caucus chairman or some of the other positions on Democrats’ sprawling leadership team.

Lee lost to Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) by 10 votes during the closely watched caucus chairman contest Wednesday, prompting outcry from her supporters who lobbed claims of ageism given the gulf between the two members. Lee is 72 while Jeffries is 48.

Jeffries made a case for generational change in his pitch to fellow lawmakers. And with the top three leaders nearing 80, his supporters see Jeffries’ job as caucus chairman as the perfect launching pad to potentially becoming the first African-American speaker.

Lee, meanwhile, made an appeal to unity before the vote, telling lawmakers that as a woman of color with unassailable progressive bonafides, she would help provide what was a critical missing link in the House Democratic leadership team. Had she been elected caucus chair, Lee would have been the first African-American woman to serve in House leadership.

The current leadership team has one Latina — Rep. Linda Sanchez (D-Calif.) is the Democratic Caucus vice chair. But Sanchez dropped out of the race for caucus chair against Lee and Jeffries earlier this month after her husband was indicted on federal charges.

Another woman of color, Rep. Terri Sewell (D-Ala.), lost her bid for caucus representative, a leadership post reserved for a member who has served five terms or less. She was defeated by Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), a liberal who was backed by the Congressional Progressive Caucus.