Too old to lead? The perils of Pelosi meet the midterms

With the midterm elections approaching and the threat of a Blue Wave overtaking the U.S. House of Representatives, and with some observers predicting an 83.1 percent advantage by the Democrats, there is talk that once that is done, and in light of their disaster in 2016, with the defeat of Hillary Clinton, that there should be new leadership in the House with much of the change focused on House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, with many saying that she “needs to go.”

While much of the criticism has come from younger people, there are also those that charge her with a level of incompetence, seemingly due to age, but also in some quarters a level of sexism, that a male leader would not face.

Earlier in August, a newly elected Michigan lawmaker said she would not vote for Pelosi, as CNN reported: “A Michigan Democrat who is poised to be elected to Congress said Thursday she would be unlikely to vote for Nancy Pelosi for speaker if Democrats retake the House, adding her name to progressive and swing-state Democrats who won't back the current minority leader.

Asked on CNN's "New Day" Thursday morning whether she'd vote for Pelosi, Rashida Tlaib said, "probably not."

"I need someone that ... is connected with, just the different levels of poverty that's going on, the fact that there are structures and barriers for working families in my district that need to be dismantled," Tlaib added. "Supporting big banks and supporting efforts that I don't think put the people first is troubling."

While that seems to be borne from identity politics, a not entirely new phenomena, Tlaib also, like many fail to give Pelosi the credit that she deserves for pushing the Affordable Care Act into law that gave millions of poor people a chance at even routine care, and extended to the rural poor, as well as the urban poor.

“When Pelosi, a political target for Republicans and progressives alike, said in May that she would run for speaker, a half-dozen Democrats backed by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee as prime candidates to flip Republican-held seats said they would not support her.

Since then, additional Democrats have distanced themselves from Pelosi, and several, including Conor Lamb in Pennsylvania and Danny O'Connor in Ohio, have made their criticism of the former speaker a key part of their appeal to moderate voters,” they said.

Also in the Midwest was Indiana Democrat Mel Hall who told USA Today that “There is almost complete gridlock in Washington, D.C., when we have folks on one side and folks on the other side who are barely civil with each other. So my call is that we need new leadership.”.

Adding her voice was Liz Watson, who “said people in south central Indiana are “looking for a new direction in Washington and  “That’s why I won’t vote for Nancy Pelosi for speaker.”

It’s no secret that money, more money, and then even more, is needed to win elections, even on the local level, as we saw, even with run-offs, such as the Doug Jones win in Alabama, and to that extent, Pelosi is  “prodigious fundraiser, with many perks at her disposal to dole out to allies. So far this election cycle, Pelosi has raised more than $87 million for her fellow Democrats.”

“I feel very confident in the support that I have in the House Democratic Caucus, and my focus is on winning this election because so much is at stake,” Pelosi told reporters when asked about the comments.

“I think Pelosi has done a great job, and she’s taken us to the majority (before),’’ said Rep. Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y., adding that Pelosi’s fate as a leader will be up to the caucus.

House Democrats have decided to hold their internal leadership elections in December which  “will give Pelosi, and any possible challengers, ample time to lobby colleagues and count votes,” yet she faces no serious contenders.

In an interview with The New York Times, “she also acknowledged a handover of power was coming eventually, and she encouraged would-be successors to prove their political mettle. Any aspiring party leader, she said, must demonstrate that “they do have a following, that they’ve shown a vision for the country,” as well as the necessary fund-raising prowess.

“If people want to be the bridge that I’m building toward, they have to show what’s on the other side of the bridge,” she said, stressing that she saw it as her role “to open doors, to build bridges, but there has to be another side to the bridge.”

Majority rules a wide margin for the 78-year-old veteran, whose voice has not been shy, and on a number of key areas, even beyond the ACA, she has proved her mettle in the Recovery Act, and Wall Street Reform in an era when it was thought that some banks were too big to fail, and her actions helped save the economy.

Pelosi has also been a target for Republicans and her name as a synonym for all of the liberal evils visited upon the nation. And, the right-leaning USA Today, somewhat gleefully, reported at the end of July, that “So far, 27 Democratic candidates have said they will not support Pelosi, according to a tally by Vox and USA TODAY’s reporting.”

“Republicans are using the San Francisco Democrat as their favorite boogeyman in this election, running reams of TV ads linking her to local House contenders.”

“It’s incredibly effective,” said Corry Bliss, executive director of the Congressional Leadership Fund, a super PAC devoted to protecting the Republican House majority. “Nancy Pelosi is the most unpopular, polarizing politician in American politics.”

Yet there is some motion to the movement and the Times noted that, “Representatives Seth Moulton of Massachusetts and Kathleen Rice of New York have been leading a group of insurgents who are urging Democratic candidates to pledge that they will not support Ms. Pelosi for speaker.

In addition to their efforts, “A diverse group of several dozen Democratic candidates, across all regions and ideological factions, have pledged to demand new leadership if they are elected.”

Mr. Moulton, 39, said he was hopeful Ms. Pelosi would soon conclude that her position had become untenable, noting that, “It’s far better for her to graciously step down before the election, so that Republicans can’t use that attack against Democrats, than to wait until after the election,” Mr. Moulton said.

Continuing in the battering of the leader, the folks at USA Today, coyly added, that their poll might be flawed, and said, “That’s not exactly true, but it's close. Only 29 percent of the American electorate has a favorable opinion of Pelosi, according to a Gallup Poll conducted in June; the California Democrat’s approval ratings have even sunk among Democrats, according to the Gallup survey.

Other congressional leaders “are similarly unpopular. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has the lowest ratings, with 24 percent approval.”

Then again, McConnell is not a woman, just an old white guy, maybe a butt of jokes, but not of sexism.

While pay to  pay-to-play politics is not new, but with the antics, escapades, and investigations, of an increasingly vulnerable administration of Trump, attacks on Pelosi do help the GOP, and especially with the character questions related to Brett Kavanaugh and the charges of sexual impropriety as a high schooler, that threaten to derail his chance as a Supreme Court justice, it’s going to be toe-to-toe come November.

The GOP has a long memory, and if Kavanaugh is denied his spot, then the heat on Pelosi might intensify,

Pelosi, is also from gasp, San Francisco, Sodom and Gomorrah for some outside of America’s urban areas, and the forces against her may get the most bang for their buck from those that view the city as all that they hate about liberals.

Much of the internal criticism goes back, once again, to the stunning loss of Clinton to Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election, and the so-called “Bernie Bros” who were hellbent on making a hard left towards Bernie Sanders whose “first day” changes were optimistic at best.

Clinton, with her support from Democratic veterans like Pelosi, notwithstanding,and some accusations of smoke filled rooms favoring her, that might have extended to some rule changes, have given credo to the ant-Pelosi charge led by eager young voters with a hero that ironically, is the age of many of their grandfathers.

One lesson that we have seen the Democrats embrace, and that is to focus on the issues, not beating the Trumpites,, that Clinton did.. To that extent Lamb focused, not just on swing voters, absenting Pelosi, but on the issues that face millions of Americans: health care, and the loss of coverage, for those with pre-existing conditions, preserving public education and also the so-called entitlement programs such as Medicare, and Social Security, that the increase in aging baby-boomers has necessitated.,

As O’Connor noted, in an interview with the Ohio press: “Growing up in a small town, you realize folks aren’t that much different no matter what their political beliefs are when it comes to the things they worry about daily.”

On another avenue, “The most perilous threat to Ms. Pelosi, for the moment, may be the impatient mood in the Congressional Black Caucus, where senior legislators have begun arguing that it is past time to elect an African-American speaker. Black lawmakers and candidates, furious about President Trump’s caustic racial politics and attacks on African-Americans, say they are determined to claim a greater role in steering their party,” they noted a few weeks ago in August.

“Some Democrats have focused on [Rep. Jim] Clyburn of South Carolina, the third-ranking House Democrat, as a potential successor. Though at 78 he would not represent generational change, Mr. Clyburn would be a history-making figure as speaker: He came under intense pressure at a black caucus retreat in the Mississippi Delta last weekend to take on Ms. Pelosi, with Representative Cedric Richmond of Louisiana and others urging him to step forward.”

Not without hubris, Clyburn said, ““If the opportunity is there I would absolutely do it,” said Mr. Clyburn, adding that the ascension of a black speaker would “put to bed forever the notion that the Democratic caucus is taking black voters for granted.”

Appealing to the Gospel of St. Matthew, “Mr. Clyburn, the son of a pastor, said he still supports Ms. Pelosi, for now, he recalled a hymnal from his youth about “keeping your lamps trimmed and burning to be ready when the bridegroom comes.”

Some, like CNN political analyst Julian Zelizer noted might be missing the boat in search of the ocean, and as he succinctly said: “But if the goal is to eliminate the bogeyman whom the GOP uses to motivate its base, then some Democrats have a badly mistaken idea of what the modern Republican Party is all about and how contemporary politics works. The truth is that regardless of who leads the Democratic Party, Republicans will demonize and characterize them as socialists who want to import radical policies to the United States.”

One could go back to Franklin Roosevelt who received withering criticism with the taint of communism when he created social security, or the staunch centrist Bill Clinton, and certainly President Obama faced the tag of socialist when many Americans couldn’t even define it.

“While liberals certainly engage in the politics of demonization, Republicans can count on a megaphone unlike any other with the conservative media universe dominated by Fox News and Breitbart.com. The entire mission of the conservative punditry is to paint all Democrats as being far left of center. Although social scientists have repeatedly shown that the Democratic Party remains much more ideologically factionalized than the GOP, which has become more ideologically coherent, such nuance disappears from the picture that viewers see of all Democrats on their television screens.”

Nearly every organization, from the church to the local VFW Hall has internal dissension, but one thing reads loud, and clear, from Zelizer’s analysis, and that is this: “The question for Democrats should not really be if Pelosi offers Republicans too easy a target but rather how their party can be tougher in convincing voters why continued Republican control of Congress threatens vital public policies and the institutions of democracy. . . and “Until Democrats start thinking this way . . .they will continue to play defense and take part in a debate in which the terms are perpetually set by their opponents.”