Sometimes it is hard to remember that Nancy Pelosi is a former member of the Progressive Caucus and that she has progressive preferences even if she has to lead the entire House, not just those that agree with her on policy. But you can occasionally get a glimmer of her progressive feistiness, like when she stripped fellow-Californian Jane Harman of her Intelligence chair, or when she tacitly supported fellow-Californian Henry Waxman’s successful coup against John Dingell’s chair of Energy & Commerce. The Politico has a story up today that shows how Pelosi is staking out her turf with the Obama administration.
In talks with Emanuel and others, sources say, Pelosi has “set parameters” for what she wants from Barack Obama and his White House staff — no surprises, and no backdoor efforts to go around her and other Democratic leaders by cutting deals with moderate New Democrats or conservative Blue Dogs.
Specifically, Pelosi has told Emanuel that she wants to know when representatives of the incoming administration have any contact with her rank-and-file Democrats — and why, sources say…
…Pelosi “is not going to allow Obama to triangulate her,” said a Democratic source close to the leadership. “It’s not going to happen to her.”
Pelosi’s mantra, in a way, is “no surprises.” The speaker wants to be told when [Senate Majority Leader Harry] Reid is communicating with the Blue Dogs or other factions with her caucus, and she expects the same from Obama when he arrives in the Oval Office, said Democratic sources.
I’d expect nothing less from a progressive speaker, but it’s good to see her being explicit about this. The Blue Dogs still wield considerable power in the House, but they don’t have the support of Pelosi or the raw numbers of the progressives. Obama will use Emanuel to get the votes he needs, using any coalition that is available. That’s fine. All Pelosi asks is to be informed.
Oh my God. You’re officially off your rocker.
Pelosi is a progressive and is laying down the law and not gonna let Obama triangulate her!
As the kids say, “Girlfriend. Paaaalease!”
How dumb do they (you) think we are? Wait. Don’t answer that because the answer is obvious.
The idea that Pelosi is looking out for liberals (or progressives) is patently absurd. It’s insulting ridiculous. It doesn’t even pass the smell test and I can’t believe you’re making this weak-ass argument.
I guess that’s about the only bone Obama is throwing liberals so that’s all you got to work with but I don’t think even you can keep spinning like this for the next 4 years. Pelosi is now the progressive hope in Washington?????!!!!!! And you’re trying to put a positive spin on this to liberals???? My God man you need to step away from the politics for a bit and reboot.
you need to work harder to understand the dynamics of the House of Representatives.
I’m sayin’. I totally co-sign, Booman.
I understand from people who actually lived in San Francisco/Bay Area that Pelosi is considered to the “right” to many folks, and maybe that’s why some folks may think this to be BS, but yeah…in the House, this is a much different ball of wax.
This is a good, important sign.
I’m a flip-flopper on Pelosi. Sometimes I think she’s on the good side of the fence, other times not so much. I think Booman is right to remind us what a difficult task she has in herding the various factions within the House.
I’m predicting that progressives are going to experience enormous frustration in the coming years, and not just because of GOP obstructionism– but rather, because there so many godawful Democrats in Congress. On Nov. 5 I woke up thinking that we had accomplished Phase #1 of the job by beating the Republicans. I actually think that Phase #2 (fixing the Democratic Party) is going to be tougher.
One would be wise to consider the conservatives’ success in fixing the Republican Party – they have just about achieved ideological and policy purity, however their remaining coalition could find itself out of power for a generation, or longer.
As long as Republicans have 40+ votes in the senate they will rule. Our Dem “leadership” is too busy keeping its powder dry, too cowardly and afraid of those mean Republicans.
How do you “fix” a coalition party? The Democrats are NOT a liberal party – they’re a coalition party of liberals, moderates and conservatives united together by a common belief that good government can provide solutions to the people’s problems. That’s what the Democratic/Republican divide has come to in this country – one party that believes that government serves a useful purpose and another one that believes that government is worthless except as a means to enrich oneself and ones cronies.
To fix that, you’d need a viable conservative party that actually understood the value of government. Before the Democratic Party can be “fixed” the Republican Party either needs to be repaired or replaced as an alternative party. Because the fundamental divide between the two parties right now isn’t “liberal” vs. “conservative”, it’s between “good government” and “no government”. Which makes for a coalition of strange bedfellows on the Democratic side of the aisle.
So Nancy is going to be a lot tougher with Barry than she was with Georgie?
Above was supposed to be a standalone comment. My internet connection/browser are acting up today.
I was going to say..
But in response to your comment – yeah, I suspect that both Nancy and Harry will be tougher with Obama than they were with King George. Mostly because they have the leverage to be tougher on Obama than they did with King George. King George could count on a united front of Republican Congresscritters to back whatever he wanted to do, and he could also count on the support of a fraction of the conservative/Blue Dog Dems for certain things (trumped up “national security” issues mostly). That’s a tough deficit to start from for any Democratic leader, given the coalition nature of the party. Harry and Nancy just don’t have the kind of control over their respective caucuses that Bill Frist or Tom Delay did – fact of life that makes their jobs harder, but they’re the fools that wanted them.
Obama’s got none of that. He can count on only the barest handful of Democratic votes when he brings his ideas to the Congress – I’m guessing mostly from the moderate portion of the Democratic party. He’ll never win over the Republicans, so he’s going to need every single Democratic vote he can get on his side. And depending on what he’s proposing, there’s no guarantee that he’ll get both the Progressives and the Blue Dogs in line with his proposals just on merit alone. That puts Nancy and Harry in a much more powerful position than they were in during the last two years where Bush basically only needed to peel off a few Dem votes here or there to get what he wanted.
So yeah, I expect them to be tougher with Obama than they were with Bush. Mostly because the power dynamic is completely different. But then I suspect that Obama knows this and will be actively working to get them both on his side, rather than try to do end runs around them.
(Also, I suspect that given the way things are in the Senate, the legislation that comes out will be more conservative than most folks around here would hope for. Because he’s not only going to need to get all of the Dems to go for it, he’s going to need to peel off a couple of Republicans to go along just to get the cloture vote. That’s not going to be an easy thing, and it means that there will probably be some compromises put into place to get folks like Voinivich, Specter, and Snow to cross the party line and vote for cloture. Which means I predict a lot of disappointed progressives in the near future.)
If Obama’s smart, he’ll toss a few bones to certain senators long before things come to a vote. He can work with Snowe, Collins, and Specter because they’re moderate pragmatists. He can work on somethings with Voinovich and Gregg because they have to watch their backs coming into the ’10 elections. He can work with Mel Martinez because he’s retiring and doesn’t need to give a damn. And Sam Brownback because he’s retiring to run for governor and he’ll want something positive to show the voters. He can work with Tom Coburn because they are good friends. And he can work with John McCain because McCain loves nothing more than to piss off his Republican colleagues in the senate and get bonus maverick points.
Some of these folks need threats, but most of them just need a little something-something for their home state. Some are as cheap as a White House dinner for the wife and kids. It’s all good. There is a new sheriff in town, and the GOP knows it.
Boo, a scant two years ago, I would have agreed with you on this.
But not anymore. Too much water under the bridge.
pelosi led the push in the house to repeal the ban on offshore oil drilling. progressive?
Pelosi appointed Porter Goss to the House Ethics committee. progressive?
plenty more here, all throughly backed up with links and citations.
Almost forgot complicit in torture.
Pelosi: “If they were poor, and they were sleeping on my sidewalk, they’d be arrested for loitering, but because they have ‘impeach Bush’ across their chest, it’s the First Amendment…. “We have to make responsible decisions in the Congress that are not driven by the dissatisfaction of anybody who wants the war to end tomorrow,” Pelosi told the gathering at the Sofitel, arranged by the Christian Science Monitor. Though crediting activists for their “passion,” Pelosi called it “a waste of time” for them to target Democrats. “They are advocates,” she said. “We are leaders.””
Brendan, you could rewind history and put any other member of the House in as speaker (try Maxine Waters) and the results would have looked largely the same because the speaker represents the House and is not an independent operator. Where you see Pelosi act on her own initiative is when she doles out committee chairs, whips, and other party leadership positions. Look at that record. There is a reason the Progressive Caucus absolutely dominates to committee chairs and it is not just seniority, as Dingell just found out. There is a reason Jane Harman lost her seat on Intelligence. There’s a reason John Larson is moving up in the party leadership.
There’s a reason the Blue Dogs are moaning that without Rahm, they’re losing power.
You make a good points, but unfortunately i have to look at that through the lens of recent history. i really don’t need to hear about the whip, because Pelosi didn’t really do muich with that office: there were a number of opportunities she had to use the whip and did not. Also, she went out of her way to speak out against progressives, as my links detail.
So i will leave the topic with what i believe is a reasonable response: we’ll see what happens. but to suggest i trust nancy pelosi will do the right thing is beyond imagination. I don’t and i can’t.
You’re right, BooMan. Nancy Pelosi has every right to want to be “informed” about what Obama and Rahm are doing.
As long as she shuts up and stays out of their way, she can be “informed” all she wants to be. Nancy wants to warn Obama not to go behind her back and cut deals with the Blue Dogs?
That’s a hell of a goddamn request coming from her, considering she was completely unable to prevent Republicans from going behind her back and cutting deals with the Blue Dogs time after time after time after time.
Methinks the lady doth protest too much.
Bush was in no ways dependent upon Pelosi passing his agenda – Obama and Pelosi will have a different working relationship, one where she can make some demands (though not many).
well, how the hell is she supposed to prevent a Republican administration from talking behind her back to her caucus members? As you point out, it’s pretty near impossible to prevent any administration from doing so, but at least she is making a statement about how she wants to interact with the Obama administration.
Fair enough. Again, it’s going to take action more than words at this point to convince me, and we won’t see that until 2009.
I wish it were that simple. I have felt for a long time that she, along with Harmon, Reyes, etc. should resign because of the gang of 4/8 crap. And all the bad things FISA, Torture, etc. that came of it
the problem madame speaker has is not so much people going behind her back, as it is her inability to control the democratic caucus/house. l’ll grant that she doesn’t get a lot of help from hoyer in that regard, either.
the bluedogs don’t pay a price for going behind her back, anymore than the RATs, nor in the future, obama and rahm. they’re just a symptom of a much bigger problem within the democratic caucus…on the whole, under the auspices of her leadership the past two years, they’ve taken the concept of compromise and made it synonymous with acquiescence…
bwaaak!
perhaps, the ousting of harman and dingell are omens that things will improve, but l’m going to have to see it to believe it.
as it is her inability to control the democratic caucus/house
Translation: Pelosi is a weak leader.
that’s the real problem of course. just like harry reid.
weak leaders, weak to the point of rendering the entire term “leader” meaningless.