The toughest woman in American politics isn’t Hillary Clinton, it’s Nancy Pelosi. The Speaker didn’t get her job by playing nice, and she’s as tough as nails. Yet, she wields her power in a distinctively feminine manner, which means that oftentimes you never see the hand that slaps you down. Does Clinton think she’s taking her campaign all the way to the convention? Think again.
“If you have no order and no discipline in terms of party rules, people will be having their primary in the year before the presidential election,” she said. “So there has to be some penalty.”
She said the party committee will come up with a formula that is “fair and accepted by both campaigns,” perhaps allowing the states 50 percent of their delegates. But “if the resolution is not appropriate, then it remains for the (Democratic National Convention) credentials committee to resolve it,” she said. Then, “it will have to happen by the end of June” or she will intervene, she said.
The Democrats hold their convention in late August in Denver.
Pelosi said she has not been in contact with the Clinton or Obama campaigns on the matter because “I think it is all going in the right direction” and will be resolved “in an orderly fashion” as early as next week.
That’s the equivalent of Pelosi saying ‘checkmate’ to the aspirations of the Clinton campaign. But you have to read between the lines. Remember, Pelosi is actually neutral:
Pelosi, the nation’s first female speaker of the House, said she is keenly aware of efforts, reported in The Chronicle this week, of the San Francisco political action committee, WomenCount, which is running full-page newspaper ads headlined “Not So Fast!” – warning against what it calls premature efforts to push Clinton from the race and crown Obama the party’s nominee.
Susie Tompkins Buell, a longtime Clinton friend and one of the effort’s organizers, said Wednesday the committee has raised $400,000 in the past 10 days from women across the country determined to make the case for Clinton all the way to the convention.
“God bless their enthusiasm,” said Pelosi of the effort. “These women are fabulous, and I know many of them very well.” But, she said, while “we all want to see a woman president … they want me to be the chair of the convention, who is neutral. And yet they want me to be for Hillary Clinton.”
How’s that for a velvet glove? Look how gently she dispatches every one of Clinton’s talking points! She never actually directly addresses any of Clinton’s arguments, yet she piles each one on the ashheap. And all the while she maintains her neutrality. Just like she’s neutral about the Bush administration:
“This president has caused great harm to America, and I say this with great sadness, because coming in as speaker, I’d hoped we could work together. … He has refused to listen to the American people, (has shown) a tin ear to the American people, a blind eye to what was happening in Iraq. … This president will go down in history as the worst, whether you’re talking about jeopardizing our national security… (or) the worst record of job creation.”
And the Republicans in the House:
“We just won three special (House) elections that the GOP never thought they would lose in a million years,” Pelosi said, referring to recent congressional races in Illinois, Mississippi and Louisiana.
“(Republicans) tried to make it about me and San Francisco values. They don’t have a message,” she said. “It’s going to be a very bad year for Republicans.”
And John McCain:
“He was in the right place on immigration, and he reneged; he was in the right place on the president’s tax cuts, and now he’s changed his mind. I’m hoping that he doesn’t change his mind on the global warming issue … but I can’t even think of a Republican president. It’s simply not going to happen.”
The Republicans had a small window when Pelosi became speaker when they could have made a mea culpa (like Scott McClellan) and removed Bush and Cheney from office. They decided to defend them instead and Pelosi acted accordingly. Now there will be payback. And the backlash is going to take out the centrist Democratic party establishment with it. Imagine how powerful Pelosi will be when she heads a caucus 280 members strong and has a president that has roots doing inner-city community organizing!
Change is coming and we’re going to have to chuck a lot of the categories we’ve used to sift political information. The Democrats will become (like they were before the Reagan Revolution) a party-and-a-half. It will be run by the party we are all familiar with, but it will have a large conservative wing. But that conservative wing won’t be racist and it won’t deny global warming, and it won’t be blindly in the pocket of corporations and unfettered free trade. It’s a realignment. And the younger generation will assure that it is a lasting realignment and that it becomes less socially conservative over time.
