2017: Whither Democrats?

Anything with CCR gets my vote.

The recent republican ads here are all about how Dem. So and So will vote with Pelosi. The guy running against Nunes has actually said in his ads that he will not listen to her.

The fact that Nancy Pelosi is the Right’s biggest boogeyman (boogeywoman?) makes me giggle a little. I kind of want to dress up as Nancy Pelosi for Halloween.

There is an attack ad here against Nancy Soderberg using Pelosi that way. The tag line is something like, We don’t need any more Democrat Nancys. Am I the only one that feels like that’s a thinly veiled dig at how Democrats are gay, on top of everything else?

I wonder what the average slackjawed magawearer thinks Pelosi’s agenda actually is. I mean, sure, she’s pro-criminal, anti-middle-class, anti-white, and all that, but is there some reason for it? Is she just supposed to be pure evil or what?

The sad thing is that she’s a conservative corporatist as far as any actual leftist is concerned.

She’s a radical feminist socialist (according to Fox and friends of course).

The old folks see even the slightest hint of “socialism” as death camps and guillotines, confiscation and nationalization. Venezuela really hasn’t helped things there.

This gets perverted into anything less than golden age lassez-faire capitalism is the equivalent of Maoists shooting you for wearing glasses. It doesn’t help that she’s not a hot woman and so is repulsive to the average Fox News old guy by default (notice how all the conservative channels always use the most attractive women they can find for the old guys. Hot secretarial seigniorage of the Weinsteinian variety or whatever.

That’s the black-and-white easy characterization of her, sure. And I find myself disagreeing her sharply on a lot of things, and frankly, I think at this point the party has passed her by. She needs to move aside.

But with that said, no Democratic minority leader in the House in my lifetime has held the caucus together more firmly as a loyal, solid bloc of votes than Nancy Pelosi. Her ability to hold the party caucus together is one of the reasons why Republicans will be so very happy to see her not the leader any longer. That ability to hold things together were qualities that a lot of prominent Democratic pundits perhaps never appreciated as much as they could have with Pelosi in the House and Harry Reid in the Senate.

There’s plenty to unpack with her leadership, sure. And the reality is there is a complex series of things going on. Her role as one of the party leaders oversaw an era in which the national focus saw apocalyptic levels of reduction in state influence, and how much blame can be placed at party leadership, of which she certainly qualifies, is one of the major long term questions.

There is certainly something to be said about having the party leader in the house capture some of the current zeitgeist, which certainly trends younger and more progressive on things like healthcare and on corporate (especially banking and medical) reform. Not holding banks to account, and specifically not putting actual legal and financial repercussions on leaders of places like Bank of America, is one of the failures of Democratic leadership under her tenure. Pragmatic is certainly a useful trait too, but there is something to the energy of standing up for people. Elizabeth Warren isn’t getting notice for saying ‘this is the best that is politically achievable, so no sense bringing up more’, she’s getting energy because she is pointing out what could, and should, be done rather than starting at the compromise position. Banking reform would be hugely popular, and going after corporate malfeasance is a winning topic.

Because that’s one of the big perception problems for Democratic leadership. It always feels like they start of proposing the pragmatic compromise position, while the right wing slobbers all over it. When you start a negotiation by proposing the middle, you’ve already lost. And that is the, not entirely undeserved, reputation democratic leadership has.

That said I don’t give two shits about the right wing demonization of her. Because no matter who the leader is that will happen. Fox news is unhinged sociopaths who will lie about anyone, so why bother worrying about what their viewers think.

Any party needs a good whip in congress.

Really well said here, Craig.

I mean, it’s just as likely cannibalizing some Election Day vote, but love the enthusiasm!

The ACA would never have happened without the good offices of Representative Pelosi of California. Just saying.

Just listen to the word. Pelosi. Pelosi. Nothing good can come of that.

Which is both a plus and a minus! It was an improvement on the status quo, but far to timid to be the actual change we need.

Yet it got derided as extremist socialism run amok. If that is how any legislative agenda is going to be portrayed, at some point you need to just say ‘fuck it’ and propose actual politically left agendas.

Except it was in the Senate that the ACA lost some of its sizzle – the misbegotten attempt to get Olympia Snowe or Susan Collins on board, became a holding effort to keep Ben Nelson in Nebraska from bolting at the last second… and also good ol’ Joe Lieberman, who was the guy who insisted on removing the public option.

Pelosi’s House version of the bill, which passed 220-215, contained a sort-of public option at least.

I gather Max Baucus wasn’t too fond of the public option either, not-so-coincidentally because he’d gotten a lot of bribes^H^H^H errr, campaign contributions from health insurance companies.

If Obama could clone himself and do a rally on election eve in every senate district up this year, Democrats would win it easily.

People Republican voters are fucking stupid.

“Immigration is the top issue.”


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