Pelosi Parlays Bad Leadership Into Another Speakership Bid
What has she really accomplished? And what can she do with a tiny majority and no mandate?
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been nominated to serve another term in her post, but does anyone in Washington deserve it less?
It’s true that, when Democrats controlled both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue in 2009-2010, they managed to ram ObamaCare down the nation’s collective throat. Not a single Republican voted for it, but that didn’t matter; Democrats had overwhelming majorities in both houses. Pelosi laughed her way down the streets of the swamp with a gavel in hand to celebrate their crushing victory. A decade later, our health insurance premiums reflect the damage.
ObamaCare remains a disaster, though Pelosi and Co. still consider it their greatest masterpiece. But even from their perspective, what has Nancy “Master Strategist” Pelosi delivered since 2010? Is there anything notable? Anything that benefited the country? Anything that even her own party can claim as a decent victory?
Their “success” in taking over healthcare (and the financial industry, by the way) cost Democrats the House in the 2010 election. They only returned to power in 2018 by re-litigating the 2016 election — running on the hoax of Donald Trump’s supposed “collusion” with Russia. We all know where that ended up: impeachment of Trump over what Joe Biden did. And Trump was rightly acquitted.
Pelosi has been the Democrat leader since 2003, but let’s recap just the last two years of her reign in the House: continuously hurling petty insults at the president of the United States; endless investigations of the administration; hoax perpetration; the impeachment charade (that went so well it was completely ignored at the Democratic National Convention a few months later); peddling fraudulent election news about mailboxes; irresponsibly downplaying COVID in the streets of San Francisco before blaming Trump for not taking it seriously; hypocritically violating city mask mandates; scarfing down gourmet ice cream in front of a $25,000 refrigerator in her home to celebrate lockdowns; literally shredding the State of the Union Address; a patronizing photo-op wearing the Kente cloth garb of slave traders; forgetting George Floyd’s name (she called him “George Kirby”); passing resolutions excusing anti-Semites in her party; and demanding a grand total of nearly $7 trillion in obscene deficit spending (including on abortion) to address the COVID crisis Democrats grotesquely exploited.
And we feel like we’re missing things.
“Stop the circus and get to work on what really matters to the American people,” Pelosi lectured Republicans earlier this month. “It is most unfortunate that Republicans have decided that they will not respect the will of the people.”
First of all, we already listed the many rings of Pelosi’s disgraceful circus. Second, she managed to lead House Democrats from the predicted expansion of their majority to a rail-thin majority of a handful of seats. Republicans picked up about a dozen seats and counting. That margin gives her no mandate, especially if Republicans hold the Senate.
“We need to not ever use the words socialist or socialism ever again,” declared Virginia Democrat Abigail Spanberger, who just barely eked out an election win. “It does matter, and we have lost good members because of that.” Note that she didn’t say Democrats shouldn’t push socialist policies, just that they shouldn’t let anyone call them that. Pelosi has winked and nodded at, if not outright championed, those socialist policies for years.
At age 80, Pelosi has seemingly signaled that this may be her last rodeo. But until she steps aside, Don Pelosi will continue ruthlessly beating back any challenges to her leadership. Democrats who are publicly kissing her ring might want to be asking themselves whether she’s worth all the trouble.