Nancy Pelosi Cruising To Speakership Without 218 Votes Or A Challenger - Polidicks

https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-leaderless-fight-against-pelosis-leadership "The strange thing about the fight to displace Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House is that no one seems willing to run against her. Marcia Fudge, of Ohio, had come close, but on Tuesday afternoon she announced that she would support Pelosi. Even before then, Fudge hadn’t signed a letter that sixteen other Democrats (eleven incumbents, four newly elected, and one whose House race has yet to be called) circulated Monday, calling for a change. The signers of the letter declared themselves “committed to voting for new leadership.” But they named no names other than Pelosi—in a sentence thanking her for her service, and calling her “a historic figure” who had been key to “our party’s most important legislative achievements.” Their plan, such as it is, seems to be to persuade enough of their colleagues to express enough unhappiness with Pelosi to make her realize that her time is over, throw up her hands, and walk away, at which point something will be figured out. “The first step is showing that she cannot get to 218, and then I believe the challengers will emerge,” Kathleen Rice, one of the signers, told reporters—two hundred and eighteen constituting the majority in the House needed to elect a member to the Speakership. (A few races are still too close to call, but it looks like the Democrats could end up with two hundred and thirty-four seats.) Rice almost certainly has it backwards. The first step would have to be a serious, in-the-open, hat-in-the-ring, non-stealth challenger. How, after all, do you get members of the Democratic caucus to commit to a major shift, at a moment when Donald Trump’s extremism makes the stakes so high, without knowing what they’re shifting to? (The scheme recalls Brexiteers’ magical thinking about the simplicity of leaving the E.U.; Theresa May could speak about how well that’s working out.) Acting as though it hardly matters whether the challengers who “will emerge” are progressive or centrist—or just opportunistic—suggests that those designations themselves might be empty. Discontented Democrats can’t push for a leader-to-be-named-later without awakening the suspicion that too many of them have forgotten how to lead, or that what they believe doesn’t matter. A risk for the Party as a whole, particularly heading to 2020, is that a leaderless leadership battle will seem like politics as usual—grandstanding devoid of meaning."

Meh

I see anyone who actually ties to challenge Pelosi being put on some DNC blacklist. The Democrats aren't immune to this kind of corruption either, sadly.

I hope elected Anti-Establishment Democrats like Cortez can try to their best to not follow deeply her all time in comes in economical and environmental issues rather than being a partisan loyalist bot like other politicans.

I think it's sad that the party in general is so discontent they can't even find a challenger to promote debate that could reshape the party structure. Newcomers like Cortez are ideological and refreshing but they have nothing to show, unlike Pelosi's "healthcare record". Without serious opposition she won't have to get out of her comfort zone and that's the issue imo. Business as usual.

I'm still optimistic, progress will take time for sure, but Pelosi is uniquely qualified for the job and I trust she'll continue to do the position justice.

Just in general it seems lately that leftwing movements and events have lacked strong leaders in comparison to the right. Everything from Black Lives Matter to Gamergate (the original one, not the rotting corpse, festering with alt-right misogyny and sexism as it is now) to now fucking this, it's like we've forgotten that in order to make a change happen we must have someone to set the standard and lead us.

From my own observation and reading: Left-wing groups tend to be a lot more picky about who their leaders are, and often unwilling to accept leaders that don't represent them; Right-wing groups on the other hand tend to match their views with their leadership, which makes them stronger and more cohesive. For example, Democrats are fragmented on whether or not Pelosi should be Speaker, while on the other hand Republicans have a fairly simplistic set of goals and beliefs and as long as a leader appears strong and meets most of these, they will support them.

Not really much of a surprise. A few donors already threatened to cut funding if Pelosi wasn't elected speaker. Not to mention, anyone that runs against Pelosi will almost certainly end up on the Democrats shit list.

I was under the impression that the biggest opposition to her was coming from more conservative democrats https://thehill.com/homenews/house/418031-problem-solvers-dems-we-cannot-support-pelosi-for-speaker-at-this-time

Unfortunately nobody to the left of Pelosi is running against her. She also gave concessions to progressives by promising to put them on important House committees (overseeing Wall Street, the CIA, energy, etc.) which is a pretty big deal when it comes to crafting legislation. It sucks, but it's politics.

I'll say this in defence of Pelosi: the last time she was Majority Leader, it was the most productive Congress since the 1960s. Congress approved an $814 billion economic stimulus, a massive health-care overhaul, and new regulations on Wall Street trading and consumer credit cards. The list grew longer during this month's frenetic lame-duck session: tax cuts, a nuclear arms treaty and a repeal of the "don't ask, don't tell" policy on gays in the military. Don't underplay Obamacare, either. Yeah it was a unified Dem government, but people forget how vicious the push against it was. The House only passed the bill by 5 votes, and I'm sure Pelosi had to do a ton of work to get to that number. A less capable Majority Leader might have had to make greater concessions to conservative Democrats to get the bill through. The 2009-11 unified Democratic Congress is the congress that the 2017-19 unified Republican Congress's partner tells it not to worry about.

This is why I get a kick out of the Pelosi fearmongering. Obviously I'm not the audience but it's hilarious trying to envision the nightmare hellscape that some people believe will become reality when she becomes Speaker when we already lived it and it was actually pretty okay as far as Congress goes.

lotta the pelosi fearmongering is originating from alt-right sources peddling to center-left dems

I remember that soundbite about obamacare that so many people took out of context. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/pelosi-healthcare-pass-the-bill-to-see-what-is-in-it/

Yeah, I honestly don't quite get what is so supposedly awful about her. Her track record seems pretty good and it's incredibly important that the Speaker position goes to someone with a lot of experience. It honestly reminds me of the smear against Clinton in 2016. Like sure, she isn't the most left leaning person around, but her track record was still pretty good and imo was still a solid choice. Somehow though she became synonymous with the devil incarnate for really no good reason. It seems to be the same with Pelosi. She's just another democrat who's been heavily targeted by Fox and the right, and it seems to be spilling over to her critics on the left as well.

For her most self-subscribed 'Left-wing' supporters or members of Democratic Party. Obviously true for right-wing and Republican member POV, but we do have your version by portraying her as increasingly out of touch stereotypical career politician with even her aging appearance, her recent rightward policies and personality traits doesn't really help for her anyway.