How Should Progressives See The Speakership Battle?

It's time for Nancy Pelosi to go. We need someone else to lead the Democratic Party in Congress. She's part of a status quo-- like Hillary-- that voters are not happy about. IT IS TIME FOR HER TO MOVE ON and make way for someone who comes from a different, more up-to-date personal and political context. Pelosi's priorities are no longer in synch with the priorities of the Democratic base. But that does not mean throwing her out and replacing her with a cabal of Wall Street and Big PhRMA-backed corporate shills. God forbid! And the Seth Moulton #5WhiteGuys coup is exactly that. The Congressional Progressive Caucus wants nothing to do with it-- nor do the vast majority of House Democrats. Blue Dogs, New Dems and other reactionaries from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party are all that this coup is about.

Alan Grayson left his House seat to run, alas unsuccessfully, for the U.S. Senate. But when he was in the House he was a great admirerer of Pelosi. He still is and when i asked him how he feels about the current leadership battle, he told me that personally, he "found that she was the only leader in the House-- on either side-- committed to the fundamental ethic that our job was to pass good legislation that would make the world a better place, and that electoral success would (and should) follow only from that."

A few days ago Chris Hayes talked about the leadership battle on his MSNBC show with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (above), who has already participated in a Climate Change sit-in in Pelosi's office (None of the #5WhiteGuys showed up.) She said when she read Moulton's letter, her "main concern was that there is no vision, there is no common value, there is no goal that is really articulated in this letter aside from 'we need to change.' I do think that we got sent to Congress on a mandate to change how government works, to change what government even looks like. But if we are not on the same page about changing the system and that values and how we're going to adapt as a party for the future, then what is the point, then what is the point of just changing our party leadership for the sake of it."

Keep in mind that Pelosi strongly backed Ocasio's opponent while the DCCC and her House Majority PAC spent $5 million electing Anthony Brindisi (NY), Ben McAdams (UT), Max Rose (NY) and Jeff Van Drew (NJ), the dishonorable and corrupt Blue Dogs who have foolishly signed on as members of Moulton's disintegrating coup.

Prodded by Hayes to define how she sees the coup, Ocasio aded that "if anything, I think that what it does is create a window where we could potentially get more conservative leadership. When you actually look at the signatories, it is not necessarily reflective of the diversity of the party. We have about 16 signatories. 14 of them are male. There are very few people of color. There's very little ideological diversity; it's not like there are progressives signing on. It's not like you have a broad-based coalition."

Since he's always so sensible, I asked Jamie Raskin (D-MD), who currently has the single best voting record, according to ProgressivePunch, of anyone in Congress. "Practically speaking," he told me yesterday, "the alternative to Pelosi right now is chaos. But chaos is not a progressive value-- it’s the classic opportunity for opportunism and right-wing politics.  Pelosi has been an historic figure who has engineered major legislative advances on everything from Dodd-Frank to the ACA. When it’s time for a change in leadership, progressive forces within Congress and across America will be ready."


UPDATE: One Less Coup Plotter

Brian Higgins is neither a Blue Dog nor a New Dem. He's an ordinary congressional Democrat and never appeared to me to be someone who belonged on Seth Moulton's list of coup plotters. And early yesterday his hometown paper, the Buffalo News, reported that he reversed course and will back Pelosi for speaker. He told the paper that he "decided to support Pelosi after she agreed to rank two of his top priorities among the new Democratic House's priorities. He said Pelosi agreed that Democrats will advance a major infrastructure bill early in the next Congress, and that Higgins will be able to take the lead as House Democrats work to pass his proposal to allow people to buy in to Medicare at the age of 50." The paper suggested that Higgins' withdrawal from Moulton's scheming "could take the steam out of the effort to replace Pelosi."