In the wake of the four Democratic losses in recent special elections that I wrote about last week, this has become a major topic of discussion.
Arguments go something like this:
“She’s toxic.”
“Republicans hate her.”
“Jon Ossoff lost because they hung her around his neck in GA-6.”
“She represents highly educated, culturally diverse, wealthy, liberal, ‘coastal elite’ San Francisco, which, in the minds of middle America, stands in for everything they hate.”
[Here’s a thought: how about we stop apologizing for being educated and culturally diverse? There’s no shame in not having a college degree. There’s no shame in working with your hands for a living. There IS shame in being willfully ignorant.]
[Here’s a second thought: Jon Ossoff lost by 4 points. Tom Price’s LAST Democratic opponent lost by 25 points. And we’re using that as evidence that Nancy was a DRAG on the ticket? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ]
I have to ask: whose interests would be served by dumping Nancy Pelosi in favor of a Representative To Be Named Later (But Probably a Penis-American, for reasons that will be shared below)?
Not Democratic interests.
Nancy whips and counts votes like a mo-fo.
In 2009, Nancy held a divided Democratic caucus together and LBJ-ed the hell out of them (aka, twisting arms until they popped out of the socket) to get the Affordable Care Act passed.
Nancy saw through GW Bush from the start – and DIDN’T support the Iraq War, for those of you who STILL insist on hammering Hillary about that.
Nancy raises money like a boss. No matter how much you might want to romanticize $27 donations, running for office is expensive and will remain so, absent structural change that will impossible given the current makeup of the Supreme Court. She brings in the money.
Nancy is holding the Democratic House caucus together now, today, in a time when Democrats’ legislative and executive influence is at its lowest ebb in maybe 100 years. They may be individually demoralized, but she is keeping them unified and enforcing party discipline in a very difficult time.
Want receipts? Here. And here. Also here (on her own website, but a WaPo article). There’s this, too.
[Another thought: Democrats HATE Paul Ryan – in fact, his approval ratings hover at or below Nancy’s. Paul is also UTTERLY ineffective. Yet there’s no rush on the Republican side to dump him, is there?]
So again I ask: whose interests would this serve? To quote Slate’s Political Gabfest podcast from June 22: why should the Democrats do something the other team wants?
Why are we even having this conversation?
I’ll tell you why. Republicans have learned how to weaponize Democratic men’s misogyny and are using it very effectively against us.
Who taught them?
I think you know the answer to this one: Bernie Sanders. And they learned his lessons well.
Want receipts? Sure. Let’s start with Salon (which is STILL Berner central, by the way). The Boston Globe. Snopes. HuffPo. Also, HuffPo. A terrific Medium post from a women’s studies professor. The always-insightful Melissa McEwan. I could go on: Google provided over 400,000 links to this topic.
Dump Nancy?
Fuck, no, Democratic men. And while you’re at it, get over yourselves.
Like what you read? Follow me on Twitter @MrsWhatsit1
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I am in 100% agreement with you. This is a continuation of the war on women, and excellent points re Bernie. He bears a lot of responsibility for the outcome of this election. He was not a Democrat, but he used the party to further he own interests and as a result split us. The appropriate course of action would have been for him to run as an Independent. He might even have won.
ALLthehellyesses.
Right the fuck on, girlfriend.
If she were a man, would anyone be having this conversation?
My point exactly 🙂
Ossof lost by 4 points, but Hilary lost by 1 point. I don’t know what this says about Pelosi, if anything, but it seems to say something about Ossof.
Yes, Ossof lost, but by ONLY four points in a RUNOFF in a Republican stronghold and after a series of outrageously mendacious ads by the GOP. What does THAT say about Ossof? Maybe the Dems should start focusing on districts where the Republicans aren’t as strong, where they’re weakening.
Yep – and in fact, all four of the special elections have been in Republican strongholds. That’s why so-called President Trump was willing to pull those guys into the administration and have a special election in the first place: “safe” seats. And while the Democrats have lost all four, each candidate has made up MAJOR ground (we’re talking in the neighborhood of 20-25 points in each case), Which bodes well for 2018, when districts that aren’t so deep red are in play. NOT that that’s an excuse to back off the work of The Resistance. But it is a reason to be hopeful.
Yep, yep, yep! Now if we can just get the indies off the Burn… I firmly believe the GOP is going to suffer greatly in 2018; I just hope there won’t be too much collateral damage from their stealth shenanigans and Trump’s idiocy, and that whatever damage they do will be reparable.
Thanks for this post (and to Infidel for providing the link over here). I go back and forth as to whether Pelosi should step aside. All the points you made are valid.
What keeps me on the fence, though, is that (and I am speaking as an old fart) I would like to see a younger face at the microphone. I don’t mind Pelosi being the woman behind the curtain, but I think optics matter in politics. Having a younger face on camera juxtaposed with old fart Yertle McConnell and orange distressed-leather Twitler announces to the world that the Democrats are looking toward the future, not the past.
I also have hope because of the younger Democratic leaders that are rising up: Kamala Harris. Keith Ellison. Tammy Duckworth. Julian & Joaquin Castro. Kirsten Gillibrand. Ben Ray Luján. Cory Booker. Stacey Abrams. Eric Garcett. Andrew Gillum. Gina Raimondo. Michelle Wu. Helen Gym. Joe Kennedy. That, to me, is one hell of a bench.
Your list is very close to mine. I posted a similar comment over at Daily Kos, and a reply to it made a lot of sense. Allow Pelosi to remain at her post, and allow the fresher faces to take on the individual issues. Instead of spreading themselves too thin, allow each to become an expert on one particular subject, and let them be the ones to appear on the Sunday talking head shows. Let the others refer the media to that particular person when asked about the issue they are assigned to. When you have a broken nose, you don’t go to a proctologist for an opinion, even though he has some knowledge about broken noses after medical school and residency.
Hear, hear.
Thank you for this! I’ve been making the point (over and over, exhaustively) to some of my fellow Dems who are on the anti-Pelosi bandwagon that she does her job superbly. They generally don’t understand what the job of party leader in Congress is. Which is something someone ought to know before saying that she is doing such a poor job that she needs to go.
Srsly. “She’s doing a bad job!” “OK, what IS her job?” “I don’t know, but I know she’s bad at it!” SMDH.