Pelosi's Jihad Against Progressive Ideas And Progressive Leaders

I've been talking to an increasing number of progressive candidates for Congress who have told me that they have no intention of voting for Pelosi as speaker in 2021. Flagstaff progressive and AZ-01 congressional candidate Eva Putzova head it right on the head: "If we are going to address climate and healthcare crises and inequality, we need leaders who understand that yesterday's politics won't work. When elected I will support a leader who is not out of touch with working class people's struggles and who can see how visionary the Green New Deal and Medicare for All are. Speaker Pelosi who publicly campaigns for my opponent (who voted with Trump nearly 60 percent of the time in the 2017-2018 cycle) fails to see what my generation will no longer tolerate: lack of political courage."

In the past it has always been Blue Dogs and New Dems from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party who have tried to depose Pelosi. She has been protected from being ousted by progressives. Now-- with her stands against the popular progressive agenda-- she will not only not be able to count on progressives to save her, she will find many of the progressive challengers being undermined by her DCCC looking for an alternative candidate. One, for example, told me she's already talking with other Democrats about replacing Pelosi with Pramila Jayapal. "Had AOC introduced the Green New Deal resolution while Boehner or Ryan was speaker," one candidate in the middle of the Blue America vetting process told me, "they would have bottled it up in committee and let it die there. That's exactly what Pelosi has done."

Pramila Jayapal introduced Medicare-for-All last February. Pelosi has that bottled up in committee to-- in committees chaired by her corrupt conservative posse who will absolutely not allow it to pass. Jayapal now has 118 co-sponsors, the most recent being Hakeem Jeffries, who Pelosi is grooming to take over for her eventually. Many progressives fear, the Green New Deal and Medicare for All will never even get votes while Pelosi is speaker. Shan Chowdhury is running for a seat held by crooked Pelosi ally and Queens political boss Gregory Meeks. Meeks does whatever Pelosi tells him to do; Shan is a different kind of leader. "We could use a breath of fresh air," he told me. "The premise for her tenure as the speaker has come and gone. With every challenge working people are facing today, we need leaders who will align with the values that can help us move in the right direction. A leader who will set the the example by not taking any corporate money, sees the healthcare is a human right for all, and will be bold on supporting the Green New Deal." To see the growing list of progressive candidates Pelosi's DCCC is sabotaging, clock on the 2020 congressional thermometer on the right.

She did an interview with Bloomberg News yesterday and the take-away was her disdain for Medicare-for-All. As Sahil Kapur reported yesterday, there was even worse than that in the interview. She was chastising Democratic candidates for the presidency-- particularly Bernie and Elizabeth-- that "those liberal ideas that fire up the party’s base are a big loser when it comes to beating President Donald Trump." THat's what's wrong with Pelosi-- she doesn't believe in Democratic values any longer. The American people have moved in a progressive direction at the same time she was moving in a neo-liberal direction. She's now so out of touch with America that she's endangering the party itself. The only politician in America more hated than Pelosi is Moscow Mitch.

Proposals pushed by Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders like Medicare for All and a wealth tax play well in liberal enclaves like her own district in San Francisco but won’t sell in the Midwestern states that sent Trump to the White House in 2016, she said.

“What works in San Francisco does not necessarily work in Michigan,” Pelosi said at a roundtable of Bloomberg News reporters and editors on Friday. “What works in Michigan works in San Francisco-- talking about workers’ rights and sharing prosperity.”

“Remember November,” she said. “You must win the Electoral College.”

Pelosi was careful not to back any one candidate in the party’s contentious presidential contest, but didn’t hold back when asked about which ideas should-- and shouldn’t-- form the party’s case to American voters. Or about her fears that candidates like Warren and Sanders are going down the wrong track by courting only fellow progressives – and not the middle-of-the-road voters Democrats need to win back from Trump.



This is familiar ground for Pelosi, who has spent the year tussling with the “Squad,” a vanguard of liberal newcomers to the House led by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York.

“As a left-wing San Francisco liberal I can say to these people: What are you thinking?” Pelosi said. “You can ask the left-- they’re unhappy with me for not being a socialist.”

Polling has consistently shown the Medicare-for-All, the Green New Deal, and a wealth tax on multimillionaires (like Pelosi, whose net worth is over $120 million) are hugely popular across the country. And Pelosi hasn't been a "left-wing San Francisco liberal" in decades and is best described today as a middle of the road partisan hack and neo-liberal from a San Francisco that is barely recognizable to people who lived there when Pelosi was first elected to Congress in the 1980s. "Her call for caution," wrote Kapur, "is backed by the authority she carries as a giant of Democratic politics who rose from the left wing of the party to become the first female speaker of the House and has earned grudging praise from her foes for her skill as a legislator. She spoke as polls show a significant tightening of the race with Warren edging up on Joe Biden at the top of the field. A New York Times/Siena College survey of Iowa Democrats released Friday showed the top four candidates-- Warren, Sanders, Biden and Pete Buttigieg-- all bunched up in a five-point spread at the top of the field." He asserted that her line reflects that of many other geriatric leaders like Pelosi as well as the special interest donors who have funded her career and who have always and will always "believe that left-wing policies will alienate swing voters and lead to defeat."

Warren and Sanders are betting on a different theory-- that voters who float between parties are less ideological and can be inspired to vote for candidates who represent bold new change in Washington.

Pelosi said Democrats should seek to build on President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act instead of pushing ahead with the more sweeping Medicare for All plan favored by Warren and Sanders that would create a government-run health care system and abolish private insurance.

“Protect the Affordable Care Act-- I think that’s the path to health care for all Americans. Medicare For All has its complications,” Pelosi said, adding that “the Affordable Care Act is a better benefit than Medicare.”

Warren has been under pressure from Biden and other candidates to demonstrate that her plan wouldn’t require tax increases on middle-class Americans.

On Friday, her campaign said it would cost $20.5 trillion and would be funded by raising taxes on large corporations and the wealthy, cracking down on tax evasion, reducing defense spending and putting newly legalized immigrants on the tax rolls. The Biden campaign called that plan “mathematical gymnastics” intended to hide the fact that it would result in higher taxes for the middle class.

Warren swatted back at the criticism, accusing Biden of “running in the wrong presidential primary.”

“Democrats are not going to win by repeating Republican talking points,” the Massachusetts senator said in Des Moines, Iowa. “So, if Biden doesn’t like that, I’m just not sure where he’s going.”

Pelosi also expressed worries about voters’ reactions to the Green New Deal, which Sanders and Warren also support, that calls for radical, rapid reductions in carbon emissions. “There’s very strong opposition on the labor side to the Green New Deal because it’s like 10 years, no more fossil fuel. Really?” she said.

Pelosi said Democrats must stick with pay-as-you-go rules to avoid adding to the debt, a point of contention with left-leaning figures who want to permit more deficit spending for ambitious liberal priorities.

“We cannot just keep increasing the debt,” she said [sounding far more like Herbert Hoover than Franklin Roosevelt].

Pelosi added that she doesn’t understand the race to the left among some candidates, because “Bernie and Elizabeth own the left, right? Is anybody going to out-left them?”

She stopped short of endorsing a tax on wealth, an idea that Warren and Sanders have embraced as a means to reduce income inequality and expand the safety net. The speaker said she wants “bipartisan” tax changes that lower the debt and fix the “dumb” Republican tax cuts of 2017.

She also steered clear of backing a cap on pay for chief executive officers.

Pelosi is living in a different political reality. It pains me to say it but she's old and increasingly senile

Will County progressive and congressional candidate Rachel Ventura (IL-11) reminded us last night that "We are living through a period of American history that is facing enormous challenges, the most pressing of course is the climate crisis. These unprecedented challenges require bold, visionary leadership that is willing and able to steer the ship in the right direction. We don't know who will be running for Speaker of the House, but my obvious hope is that there is a progressive choice or a coalition of new leaders. I will work with the Progressive Caucus and the Squad to position ourselves strategically to be in the best position possible to pass a progressive agenda. For the time being it is important that we get as many progressives into Congress along with a progressive president."

Friday night at the big Democratic Party rally in Iowa, Elizabeth Warren shredded Mayo Pete-- a real Pelosi-kind of candidate-- without mentioning his name: "I'm not running some consultant-driven campaign with some vague ideas that are designed not to offend anyone" and went on to also cut down the other Pelosi fave, Status Quo Joe, saying Biden thinks "running some vague campaign that nibbles around the edges is somehow safe, but if the most we can promise is business as usual after Donald Trump, then Democrats will lose."

The newest polling from YouGov for The Economist asks registered voters if they have a favorable or unfavorable opinion of various American politicians. Pelosi faired extremely poorly.

• Pelosi-- favorable-38% ; unfavorable- 47%
• Trump-- favorable- 40%; unfavorable- 54%
• Bernie-- favorable- 40%; unfavorable- 46%
• Elizabeth-- favorable- 40%; unfavorable- 42%
• Status Quo Joe-- favorable- 39%; unfavorable- 47%
• Mayo Pete-- favorable- 34%; unfavorable- 35%
• Schumer-- favorable- 31%; unfavorable- 42%
• Moscow Mitch-- favorable- 26%; unfavorable- 49%
• Pence-- favorable- 37%; unfavorable- 48%

So that's 47% for the 2 progressives and 37% for the 3 conservatives