Last updated on September 25th, 2023 at 08:48 pm
Last week, Democrats won the House back with a caucus that looks more like America than at any other time. Over 100 women will be in the House. Thanks to the women who ran, who worked to elect Democrats and the people who voted for them, Donald Trump will face oversight for the first time in his presidency. Progress that Trump has been trying to roll back will be protected.
Nancy Pelosi had more than a little to do with making that possible. And yet, there is an organized effort to deny her the speaker’s gavel because the five white guys who organized the anti-Nancy campaign say it’s time for a change, for someone new, for someone more progressive.
Balderdash!
To get more stories like this, subscribe to our newsletter The Daily.
I believe we need someone who can hit the ground running, who can stand up to Donald Trump and spot Republican shenanigans a mile away. We also need someone with well honed negotiation skills and the capacity to bring diverse interests together.
When Seth Moulton and his gang of five started this, they didn’t have an alternative and equally capable leader in mind, primarily because there isn’t one with anywhere near the demonstrated abilities of Nancy Pelosi. To date, they’re floating Marcia Fudge as a possible alternative because five white guys leading an insurrection to nominate another white guy as speaker would be a bad look.
If this is about having a more progressive speaker, then why would they recruit someone who opposed a Federal ban on LGBT discrimination last year? The only other House Democrat who opposed the bill was Dan Lipinski.
So much for the Moulton et al’s claim that this is about wanting someone more progressive.
Frankly, I’m sympathetic to some of their objectives, like Medicare for all, which isn’t merely part of an ideological wishlist. It is about people’s lives.
But for a bill to become law, you need a majority in the House, in the Senate and the President who will sign it. McConnell and the Republican majority in the Senate will not support Medicare for all and even if they did, Trump won’t sign it.
Call me crazy, but I like reality and miss it terribly after two years of alternative facts, conspiracy theories, obstruction of justice, corruption and destructive policies.
There is no escaping reality, just ask Republican idealogues who couldn’t get anything done – even when they had single party rule. The one thing they did get done, the tax scam, was so unpopular they ran away from it.
But, they did run on smearing Nancy Pelosi. No one scared Republicans as much as she did because they know, she can raise money, she knows how to pass legislation, she knows the House rules inside out and the thing they feared most is she could see right through them.
So, I’m not buying the “time for a change argument” – primarily because the anti-Pelosi campaign plays right into the Republicans hands.
I smell misogyny. Why else would a group of five white men go after a woman who won back the House with more women than ever before.
I smell it when five white guys respond to the women by throwing a successful women under the bus. Nancy Pelosi and the women who ran and who worked tireless to get Democrats elected not only won the House, but with record numbers, with a caucus that looks, sounds and lives more like America than the Republicans can ever dream of.
I smell misogyny when five white guys don’t know who they want to replace the woman who made this happen. They only know they don’t want the woman to lead.
I smell misogyny when by their own admission, the five white guys know Nancy Pelosi is tough, capable and knowledgeable but they say, they just want someone new.
I smell the misogyny because the five white men who are leading the … campaign against Nancy are simply against Nancy, but not for someone else. So this isn’t about wanting someone “better”. This isn’t about wanting someone more progressive because the closest they have to an alternative to Nancy Pelosi is one of the two Democrats who opposes a federal ban on LGBT discrimination.
In his Tuesday column, Charles Pierce nailed it this observation about Tim Ryan, one of Moulton’s gang of five white guys.
“After an election in which the Democratic Party continues to elect a demographically and politically diverse collection of new House members, Ryan is still insisting that the party needs to “reach out” to angry white men in places like Ohio when, in fact, if the midterms proved anything, it is that the Democratic Party’s future is in places like Arizona and Nevada, and even Georgia and Florida, while, except for Sherrod Brown, god bless him, Ohio is a lost cause.”
Courting angry white men has nothing to do with progress, and everything to do with attacking Nancy Pelosi for having the audacity to succeed while being a woman.
That, is the definition of misogyny.
Pierce raised another point to chew on for anyone who thinks replacing Pelosi to pander to angry white men is a smart idea.
“The #FiveWhiteGuys seem to think they can scare Pelosi out of running, which is completely foolish. This is because, if it’s not a bluff, and Moulton really has these votes, it almost certainly means that he’s cut a deal with some Republicans to get them.”
What part of throwing in with Republicans to block Pelosi sounds progressive to you?
The fact is, nothing would please Donald Trump more than if misogyny within the Democratic Party succeeded where he and the Republican Party failed.
If Moulton et al were to succeed, they would seriously weaken the Democratic Party. You’d never hear about the progressive agenda again because for the five white men, progressive ideas are nothing but bait to be used to secure support for a sucker’s deal, exactly like the caravan was bait for Donald Trump’s base.
Former contributor.
