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In (Chapter A) I was on the ledge about the idea that the Democrats won’t be aggressive enough in investigating Trump. I’ve now largely been reassured as we saw in (Chapter B). But now I have something else to wet the bed over: an absurd sectarian junta to bring down Nancy Pelosi right when we need her to take the fight to Donald Trump-after her leading us to such a glorious victory.

Somebody needs to explain this one to me.

Felicia Sonmez and Mike DeBonis report that all is well in the House GOP caucus:

Rep. Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) ascended to the top job in House Republican leadership Wednesday, while Rep. Liz Cheney (Wyo.) followed in her father’s footsteps by taking the party’s No. 3 spot.

McCarthy prevailed over Rep. Jim Jordan (Ohio), 159 to 43, according to the House press gallery, while Cheney was elected by voice vote.

Speaker Paul D. Ryan (Wis.) is stepping down at the end of his term in January. That opened up the top leadership spot, which — after the party lost its House majority in last week’s midterm election — will be minority leader.

“So McCarthy helped oversee the Republicans getting shellacked and he’s getting a promotion, while House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) led Democrats to a huge victory and she’s facing a rebellion.”

Yes I know there’s all this talk of ‘change’ and a need for ‘new leadership.’

Here’s what I don’t understand though. Chuck Schumer sailed to reelection as the Dem’s Senate Minority Leader. Listen, as a NYer I certainly have nothing against Chuck Schumer-though as I noted in (Chapter A) I do sometimes worry if he’s too nice to lead the #Resistance to Trump in this polarized age.

I mean, Harry Reid hated George W. Bush, he hated the Republicans in general. I know, I know, the bluestockings are  rushing over to remind us ‘we must not hate…’

But, honestly, I always found Reid’s attitude refreshing-I could never even look at W-because I never got over the thought the he-his brother, his party, his Republican Supreme Court had stolen that election from Al Gore. And Reid seemed to find looking at W as unpleasant as I did and I appreciated that-I mean that’s representation.

Schumer seems like an awfully nice go along to get along type of a guy. Generally guys like that are great guys but I don’t want to be Trump’s buddy, I want to defeat him.

But this may be uncharitable to Schumer who I do realize is a brilliant tactician-the Senate Dems actually did a very good job in fighting Kavanaugh’s nomination-the truth is the GOP had always resolved to use its partisan power once again to plow him through. The Senate Dems actually succeeded in making it a much tougher fight than anyone in the media thought beforehand. Kavanuagh may have been plowed through but he was greatly bloodied.

UPDATE: I guess this gives me the opportunity to quote Keynes: When the facts change I change my mind what do you do sir?

I’ve had to change my mind on the leadership of both Schumer and Pelosi in 2019.

Start with Schumer:

Overall it now seems quite arguable that the Dems were not nearly aggressive enough in the Kavanaugh fight and that it was Schumer who counseled them to pull punches.

Indeed my basis for changing my mind is Ryan Grim’s book that took a deep dive into the subject and it’s clear that Grim himself had something of a mind change.

On July 9, Grim had wrote a story for the Intercept that Schumer had warned the Dems need to fight Kavanaugh hard for pay the price with the base. 

I don’t actually agree with this:

Schumer has told colleagues that reviving complaints about the Garland process will be ineffective, referring to Republicans’ refusal to consider Barack Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland. Instead the party needs to attack the nominee specifically, Schumer’s team has advised Senate offices, according to Democratic aides who requested anonymity because they are not authorized to speak publicly.”

The trouble is this is just one more case of the GOP destroying norms and the Dems just turning the other cheek. If even the Democrats stop discussing the theft of Garland’s seat then it has become totally normalized and accepted-for Republicans-to act this way. Of course, squeamish leaders like Schumer won’t do anything to breach the norms; there is a current movement among the progressive base to end the filibuster and court packing-to do court packing we’d need to overturn the filibuster. I fully agree with this and Harry Reid has now endorsed scrapping the filibuster but can you imagine Schumer doing it?

As for court packing-if you rule that out it will be another generation before liberals have a prayer of a non Right wing Supreme Court. No simply winning in 2020 and appointing their own Justices isn’t enough: the oldest Justices are liberals-RBG(86) and John Stevens(79). Clarence Thomas as the oldest conservative on the Court is still only 71.

But regarding Schumer, the idea suggested in the tweet above by my friend and fellow resister Charlotte Clymer that Schumer’s ‘leadership style doesn’t exist’ might seem harsh but it’s in line with Democrats in his own caucus say.

Whipping those Senate votes into line will require Schumer to push his colleagues in ways he never has before. “Chuck has spent his career trying to make everyone of his colleagues happy and telling them what they want to hear,” said one Democratic senator, speaking anonymously so as not to anger the party’s Senate leader. “There’s no sense of leadership. It just feel as if everyone is in a big tent, just staying where they are, doing whatever they feel is in their best interests.”

This is why even if the Dems do take back the Senate in 2020-and that will be an uphill fight-there’s no guarantee they do the right thing-end the filibuster and generally flex their majority muscle.

But what started to worry me was Schumer’s attitude after-Kavanaugh was in fact rammed though-he had nothing to say at all.

But let’s be clear-I have no problem with Schumer’s effortless winning another two years as the Dem’s Senate leader-I agree with the choice. Here’s what bothers me: comparison with Pelosi. It’s now clear that the Dems are set to win close to 40 seats-maybe even 40. So Pelosi won. Schumer didn’t-though it certainly wasn’t ‘his fault’, in fact with such a treacherous map the Dems did very well to lose only one to two seats.

But in any case Grim’s piece in July, 2018 gave you cause for optimism-based upon it Schumer was girding his Senate Democrats for a ‘brutal fight.’

However, Grim’s book published in June of 2019 gives us quite a different picture-Schumer may have claimed publicly that the Dems must put up a brutal fight but what he was telling his members behind the scene was quite different-basically the opposite. 

A new book by The Intercept’s Ryan Grim provides damning new insight into Senate Democrats’ abject failure to meaningfully oppose Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination, with Grim reporting that Chuck Schumer instructed his party to basically sit on its hands, lest the Republicans weaponize any attacks on Kavanaugh.”

This sounds an awful lot like the Pelosi argument of 2019-impeaching the fake ‘President’ will only play into his hands by inciting his base. What Pelosi and Schumer both need to do is read this poll analysis which shows that 2020 is about turnout not persuading the other side.

But the fear of the Pelosis and Schumers of the world in ‘ginning up the GOP base’ is based on the illusion that to beat Trump in 2020 you need some of his supporters or at least GOP leaning independents. This is false-in truth there is and has always been an anti Trump majority and the key to winning in 2020 is mobilizing this anti Trump majority not reaching out to the Deplorables.

As New York reported late Tuesday afternoon, Grim’s reporting comes in his new book, We’ve Got People: From Jesse Jackson to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the End of Big Money and the Rise of a Movement, which is out now. Per the site, Grim reported that Schumer “repeatedly told outside allies that a furious stand against Kavanaugh would enrage Trump supporters and only disappoint progressive voters. We have no power, he explained repeatedly.”

We have no power. Schumer missed his calling as a motivational speaker! Do you think that’s what Mitch McConnell was saying in 2009? No he was saying the opposite-and his GOP even though in the minority did manage to gum up the works and make every forward movement of the ball for Team Obama difficult. Sorry but if nothing else you have to question Schumer’s imagination.

And what we’ve seen in 2019 is that even with all the power as the House Dems now have, they still act like the minority party afraid of their own shadows-in a crouching position ‘He’s self impeaching just win 2020.’

Indeed, the Senate Dems were basically punting their opposition until the release of Dr. Christine Ford’s letter forced their hand. What’s pretty ironic is that the GOP ended up demonizing Diane Feinstein-they wrongly accused her of leaking it and claimed she had timed it by releasing the letter so late so as to gum up the process.

Look-I wish she had shown the gumption to leak the letter, but she clearly didn’t. Indeed, she was going to let it gather dust in a closet somewhere.

Grim reports that Senator Dianne Feinstein failed to act on a letter from Blasey Ford, her constituent, for weeks, despite pressure from fellow California senator Kamala Harris. The office of Representative Anna Eshoo forwarded the letter, which described her allegation against Kavanaugh, to Feinstein on July 30. However, it only became public in mid-September, after Grim reported on its existence in The Intercept. In his book, Grim casts doubt on Feinstein’s explanation for the delay — that Blasey Ford had requested anonymity — noting that her argument “ignored that Blasey Ford had already taken repeated steps to come forward, had already told friends she planned to do so, had already come forward to two congressional offices and reached out to the press, and was only asking for confidentiality until she and Feinstein spoke.”

The irony is that Feinstein’s copout of an explanation-she was keeping it private at Dr. Ford’s request-was used by Chuck Grassley and Friends to cast all kinds of dark aspersions at Feinstein. In a way this is kind of a fitting metaphor of the Dem leadership strategy in general-like Ryan Cooper says they keep waiting for the public to reward them with responsibility points for one sided displays of good faith. 

Feinstein’s evasions were not political hardball but yet another one sided display of good faith but rather than getting her responsibility points she was demonized and slandered by the GOP.

More from Splinter regarding Feinstein:

“Blasey Ford’s letter didn’t just contain information that could jeopardize the nomination of a man who posed a threat to Roe v. Wade. Its very existence implied some moral obligation on the part of its recipients: Blasey Ford wrote the letter, and initially contacted Eshoo, because she wanted to be heard. If Feinstein understood Blasey Ford’s intentions, why did she hesitate to reveal the letter? Grim offers an answer, reinforced by contemporaneous reporting from The New Yorker. Feinstein, the magazine reported, believed her party “would be better off focusing on legal, rather than personal, issues in their questioning of Kavanaugh.” There are other, more cynical possibilities for her delay. The senator also faced a challenge to her reelection bid: Fellow Democrat Kevin de Leon was running against her from the left. As Grim notes, Feinstein needed conservative votes to shore up her lead in the state’s general election. A combative posture toward Kavanaugh didn’t exactly serve her interests.”

Ford herself clearly wanted the information public-her timing was based on her not wanting to see this man who had sexually assaulted  her rewarded with a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court.

As for Schumer-this is how events unfolded. First he told his Senate Dems they have no power do basically don’t expend too much energy against Kavanaugh-despite the affront of the stolen seat, Kavanaugh’s own history of dealing with hacked emails, his radically anti abortion stance, his history with Ken Starr setting up a perjury trap for Bill Clinton, his own words suggesting that the Trump-Russia investigation was a ‘with hunt.’

But then Dr. Ford’s letter emerged and a real fight ensued. Of course, the letter came out despite the Dem leaders-Feinstein was prepared to let Kvanaugh get ‘rammed through’ without letting the public know of the accusations; this is what Ford really feared.

So when it came out and Dr. Ford gave that powerful testimony what was Schumer’s advice then? 

So what message was he rallying the troops around behind closed doors instead? According to New York (emphasis theirs), basically nothing:

For a moment, it looked like the professor’s decision to testify — though she knew it would be painful and possibly even dangerous — might accomplish what Democratic leaders thought impossible. Grim reports that when the Democrats gathered on September 27, shortly after Blasey Ford’s gripping testimony, Schumer advised his caucus to do nothing. “There was no way, he said, that Kavanaugh could survive. That meant that the smartest Democratic move at this moment was to not get in the way,” Grim writes. “Don’t do anything, he told Judiciary Committee members, that could screw this up and give Republicans some way to paint Kavanaugh as the victim. Stand down, he said.”

Simply “no way” Kavanaugh could survive, Schumer reportedly said, as millions of women around the country now fear for the future of Roe v. Wade. “Don’t do anything” that could allow Republicans—always the stewards of good faith politics—to “paint Kavanaugh as the victim,” he reportedly said. They did that in spades anyway, and were quite likely always going to, even if Democrats had waged a fiercer war on the nomination and were still ultimately unsuccessful.

Do nothing. That’s always the preference of the Dem leaders-do nothing or as little as possible and things will somehow all work out. Confronting an accused sexual predator makes the accused sexual predator a victim. It’s amazing but this has been verbatim Pelosi’s narrative-impeaching Trump or being too tough on him only makes him the victim. Yeah, I mean that’s what kept Hitler in power for so long-the opposition was too tough on him, made him the martyr.

Based on this why prosecute rapists and murderers-it only makes them the martyr.

The revelations in Grim’s book raise interesting questions, which remain relevant with the Democrats’ moderate and more activist wings still splitover what tactics to use in countering the Trump administration. If nothing else, Schumer, Feinstein, and their colleagues had a moral obligation to press the fight on Kavanaugh, both for Blasey Ford and for their constituents, who will suffer under the weight of the conservative Supreme Court. By the end of the Kavanaugh hearings, Grim wrote, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell “had a single purpose” in pursuing the nomination: spite, directed mainly at the activists who’d fought so long and so hard to block Kavanaugh from the Court. “It was to look those protesters in the eye and say, in as clear a voice as possible: No, you don’t matter,” he continued. But they did matter, and they still matter, and they deserve a party whose leaders aren’t afraid to agree.

But do they matter for Schumer and Pelosi?

 

But why are none of the cries for ‘new leadership’ being directed at him? Why only Pelosi who-not to put to fine a point on it-won close to 40 seats.

It’s very curious-Mitch McConnell-whose national popularity is even worse than her’s sailed through for another two years as GOP Senate Majority Leader. Meanwhile, Kevin McCarthy sailed through as the new GOP House Minority Leader.

None of these gentlemen had anywhere near the success Pelosi did November 6 and yet only she is in trouble. Again, can someone explain that to me without reference to the fact that she’s the only one of the four who’s necessarily not a gentleman? 

Trump is rightly freaking out right now. But if anything can save him from what’s coming it’s Democrats foolishly wasting energy fighting each other. But some, like Seth Moulton seem to see Pelosi as the real enemy rather than Donald Trump.

UPDATE: Alas I’ve had to rethink much of what I wrote here in the first eight months of the Dems running the House. I’ve certainly had to reassess my view of both Pelosi and Moulton-much more below.

If there is one thing that’s clear it’s that the Democrats need to be ready to hit the ground running in January not having someone new at Speaker engaging in on the job training-let alone the fact no one has even come forward to oppose Pelosi. What a great way to spend the next 6 weeks. The GOP has its leaders but the House Dems-who have the most to celebrate are doing Lord of the Flies.

What really galls me about those who want to take Pelosi down is they have no good reason for it. I just despise how impressionable so many alleged ‘Democrats’ are:

 

Yes, a number of new candidates took an oath not to vote for her-though many in fact hedged. But what really gets me is the suspicion that the main reason so many Democrats have bought into this idea that it’s more important to make Pelosi walk the plan than defeat Donald Trump is because the GOP keeps demonizing her.

Many Democrats take the GOP’s word on it-surely we need a Democratic Speaker the GOP approves of. Then life will be complete and have some meaning…

What irks me about Nancy Pelosi Derangement Syndrome is what irks me about Hillary Clinton Derangement Syndrome-it all seems to derive from impressionable liberals who think the secret is finding Dem leaders the GOP will say nice things about. That and rank sexism.

And what a big coup it was for the Right to convince so many liberals in 2016 that the most important thing to prove you had the right mood affiliation as a ‘true progressive’ was that you hated Hillary Clinton?

Brian Beutler has the same thought:

As Eric Boehlert says we got here because many Democratic candidates were asked incessantly about her during the campaign. Just like with Hillary, no one ever explained why Pelosi is supposed to be the devil but the incessant questions more or less presumed she was.

However, I guess these Democrats opposing Pelosi are happy as Karl Rove fully supports their quest to take her down-he’s cracking the whip and demanding these Dems that took this unnecessary pledge keep firm. 

I guess if the key to choosing a Speaker is coming up with someone Republicans approve of, the anti Pelosi crusaders  must be very happy, no matter how senseless this in fact is.

Do these knew elected House Democrats want to honor a pledge for Karl Rove’s benefit or defeat Donald Trump? Rove doesn’t want us to be successful in holding Trump accountable so this might suggest ulterior motives in his support of the anti Pelosi junta.

UPDATE: Here’s another anti Pelosi post that argues:

Anyone but Nancy Pelosi for Speaker

Guess who published this anti Pelosi screed: would you believe the National Review?

So they anti Pelosi crusaders have won over Rove and the National Review.  Why do you suspect that is? Because they want theDemocrats to have the most effective leadership while investigating Trump?

Here is what one long time Republican-strategist for Bush 41, McCain, and Kasich is saying:

https://twitter.com/jwgop/status/1062885431157628928

Former GOPer Morning Joe also points out the folly of dumping such an accomplished and well disciplined leader at a time this. As he says, the GOP ran against her and lost the most seats since Watergate.

The last thing we need when we’re about to bring the fight to Donald Trump is a Speaker with training wheels.

https://twitter.com/MrDane1982/status/1062904955667918848

You tell them, Mr. Weeks.

https://twitter.com/MrDane1982/status/1062925476812017665

We should let Pelosi leave when she’s ready and this is probably her last term. She would have left had Hillary not lost been robbed. Pelosi has stayed in the game due to her concern for her members and her country. We need her to guide us through this great battle.

FN: Or so I had thought-see below for my  current ambivalence if this proved correct after all.

Surely, you don’t think it’s an accident that the anti Pelosi coverage is so similar to how the anti Hillary Clinton coverage sounded? A lot of liberals and progressives who even now believe the lies the GOP told about Hillary Clinton for 25 years are falling into this same trap again. In 2016 you heard a number of female reporters declaring it’s a post gender age. It wasn’t then and it’s not now.

It needs to be understood that any Dem woman who runs in 2020 will see some of the same awful coverage. Warren also gets some pretty terrible coverage-look how the media treated her attempt to respond to Trump’s bullying over ‘Pocahontas.’ The first point missed is you can’t tell what someone is simply looking at them which has been the presumption of the GOP attacks against her over the years.

And you do hear talk that many insider Dem types worry about Trump’s slurs against her-no one is taking him to task for using such despicably racist slurs but her for being the object of them-talk about taking the bully’s side.

UPDATE: It’s never been clear why Trump’s racist slur was supposed to be so devastating to her-but currently she is proving them wrong-the futures market has actually had her ahead of Biden the last week. 

The junta leading the fight to take down Pelosi has been dubbed the five white guys. 

The five white guys then use Marcia Fudge-who opposes LGBT rights and my own NY Congressman Kathleen Rice as human shields.

As Charles Pierce argues the #FiveWhiteGuys are offering a sucker’s bet:

“The battle for the leadership of the incoming Democratic majority in the House of Representatives is already a mess. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Creative chaos, well-controlled, is good for a political party. It’s where the new energy behind new ideas originates. This remains true as long as that creative chaos doesn’t overwhelm the institution and, therefore, the majority’s ability to get anything done.”

“Shoot enough sodium pentothal into Speaker Paul Ryan, the zombie-eyed granny starver from the state of Wisconsin, and he likely would tell you that he’d have been infinitely better off if every member of the Freedom Caucus had been dropped down a well. This analogy is being applied to the new, young, leftish members of the incoming majority. But they’re not the real threat, as we shall see. The real threat was encapsulated on the electric Twitter machine with the hashtag, #FiveWhiteGuys.”

“(As Tuesday went on, I began to regret my original perception that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s participation in the climate-change gathering in Nancy Pelosi’s office was a show-pony move. My mind was changed when I realized that both women had managed the event in such a way that they strengthened their respective brands. AOC maintained her outsider-green street cred, while Pelosi, by not panicking and by reinstating the House climate-change working group, demonstrated—again—her gifts for legislative political strategy. After the episode ended, AOC told the Washington Post: “What we need to show her is that we’re here to back her up.”)

“Alas, it is my painful duty to report that the #FiveWhiteGuys are led by Seth Moulton, congresscritter from the Sixth Congressional District here in the Commonwealth (God save it!), and a man who has been farting higher than his own arse ever since he got elected in 2014. Moulton ran a strong campaign. He ousted an endangered incumbent who was all tangled in so much family corruption that a Republican pickup of that seat was a distinct possibility—or, at least, as distinct a possibility as was ever enjoyed by a Massachusetts Republican. Almost immediately, Moulton signed on to the challenge to Pelosi’s leadership mustered up by the anti-charismatic Tim Ryan of Ohio. Almost immediately, and most spectacularly, Moulton began spending a lot of time in Iowa. This is a fellow who thinks a great deal of his own inherent political gifts.”

“Now, it seems, they’ve gotten the band back together again. The #FiveWhiteGuys are Moulton, Ryan, Ed Perlmutter of Colorado, Kurt Schrader of Oregon, and Bill Foster of Illinois. The driving forces remain Moulton and Ryan, with the latter the putative leader. 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. It was an outlier even in its own geographic area. There were Democratic—and progressive—victories in Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Illinois. Ohio and, yes, Iowa, were loss leaders.”

While there are  some women following them, these are the ringleaders.

But were back to HA Goodman and the Bernie Bros in 2016: I support any woman just not that woman. 

https://twitter.com/GaryLegum/status/1062898729836003328

“I am willing to concede—indeed, I am devoutly hoping—that this talk is all a bluff. 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.”

Exactly-cuo bono? Who benefits? Karl Rove and Trump’s other GOP co-conspirators.

Again, Moulton is not in any conceivable sense a progressive on the Left.

“He spends an awful lot of time blowing off steam about bipartisan problem-solving and all those other conjuring words that will magically transport you to cable green rooms, but that also completely ignore the fact that, now that it’s in the minority, the Republican House caucus will be even crazier than it was under Paul Ryan. And arguing that the party needs a “new generation of leadership,” while playing coy over who that might be, and whom they might owe for their elevation, is a bit of smoky legerdemain that smacks of a three-card monte game.”

FN: That’s how it looked then-Moulton certainly seemed to fit the prototype of a Problem Solvers hack-who think the answer to every problem is ‘bipartisanship. However, it turns out he’s for impeachment which is not what you’d expect at all from a Problem Solvers’ hack. More below.

This is who we should choose over a proven leader like Nancy Pelosi when in six weeks we need to start investigating Donald Trump? Not only does this benefit Trump and his GOP co-conspirators it only benefits them. Their only hope is a circular firing squad-against the woman who led us to such a great and wonderful victory.

Of course, Moulton doesn’t even have the guts to run himself. There’s some phantom challenger who will emerge late in the game? This is the guy we’re supposed to follow down this rabbit hole?

Back to Charles Pierce:

“For those members, old and new, who oppose Pelosi from the left, the #FiveWhiteGuys are offering a sucker’s bet. The #FiveWhiteGuys are of the school that believes that the Democratic Party’s needs are best served winning back all those disgruntled folks at diners in the Mahoning Valley, a theory fairly well demolished last Tuesday. It is very unlikely that a Green New Deal or Medicare For All is high on their list of priorities. The only argument that the #FiveWhiteGuys have that might resonate with their new progressive colleagues is that Pelosi is old and has been in Congress for a long time. Period. That’s not enough to dispense with the party’s most effective legislative leader since Lyndon Johnson.”

FN: As it unfolded it turns out they left their best argument on the table: Pelosi is an impeachment phobe who won’t impeach Trump even if he does shoot someone on 5th Avenue in broad daylight.

Josh Marshall also warns about this sucker’s bet of the #FiveWhiteGuys:

“I wanted to share a few thoughts about the House Democrats’ leadership election. First, I’m ambivalent about Nancy Pelosi becoming Speaker again. Turnovers in leadership are good. The dozens of new House Democrats converging on Capitol Hill this week visibly shows the power of generational succession. The Democrats’ current House leadership has been in place for more than 15 years, an extraordinary length of time by historical standards.”

“There’s a separate matter. Somewhat like Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi has been so consistently vilified and caricatured by national Republicans that she has become, objectively, a highly charged figure as the face of national Democrats. We can lament that, think it’s the product of things that are vicious and unfair. I do. But that doesn’t make it not true.”

Ok but I think it’s a problem to just accede to such agnosticism: the question is why is it  women like Hillary and Pelosi who are always the ones so caricatured and vilified? Isn’t  the way Democrats are always conceding the point part of the problem?

“At the same time, there are very few people who understand the inner workings of the House, what caucus leaders do and what she managed to get done between 2007 and 2011 who don’t think she’s a legislative leader of extraordinary ability. She also has critical support from a broad array of the parties different factions, in and out of Congress. As important as anything, Pelosi is tough, something particularly important facing Donald Trump for the next two years.”

“I make these points simply to put my own cards on the table. The relevant point to me is that it’s not clear what the small anti-Pelosi faction plans for day two – what happens after Pelosi gets knocked out of the leadership contest – other than a highly divisive leadership fight with no good consequences at all.”

No good consequences unless you’re Donald Trump, Karl Rove the National Review, or one of his other GOP co-conspirators.

Here’s recovering GOPer Tom Nichols:

 

At least some of the incoming Dem freshmen who unfortunately made this foolish and unnecessary pledge to their defeated Republican opponents get it:

“Pelosi won a minor battle in the larger speaker war Wednesday, as her opposition seemingly has dropped a proposal to raise the caucus threshold for nominating a speaker to 218.”

“Perlmutter had pushed for that caucus rule change in September. But on Wednesday, as the caucus held its first meeting with members-elect to discuss the 116th Congress, Perlmutter didn’t bring up the 218-vote threshold, according to multiple members and aides present.”

“Rather, Perlmutter briefly discussed the other half of his initial proposal, ending a rule that binds members to vote for the caucus’s nominee for speaker. He did not offer an amendment or a motion to bring the proposal up for a vote.”

“Several Democrats have questioned the point of changing the rule, since it’s never been enforced and there’s no mechanism by which it could be. Even the incoming freshmen have caught on, with California’s Katie Hill, who beat Republican Rep. Steve Knight, standing up during the caucus meeting to ask what the purpose of the proposal was.”

“The answer was that it’s internal party strife,” she told reporters after the meeting. “So I said as a member of the freshman class, a) I wanted clarification because we don’t know what is happening, right? And b) I would love to reiterate that we just want to move on.”

“Asked what she meant by move on, Hill said, “We have to hit the ground running Day One. We have to get things going. The more that the media focuses on, or the more that anyone focuses on internal party dynamics, the less productive it is. As far as I’m concerned, they tried to run these campaigns against every single one of us as far as comparing us to Nancy Pelosi, and it didn’t work.”

“Hill, who hadn’t previously specified whether she’d vote for Pelosi, said that she will.”

“I’m from California, I’m a Democrat, I’m a woman. I’m going to end up voting for her,” she said.

Exactly. These young women who just got elected need to understand: Nancy Pelosi is them-they are her. It was fool’s gold to believe that what happened to Hillary in 2016 didn’t happen to all women who aspire to forbidden power and it’s more fool’s gold to believe you can say ‘Any woman just not that woman’-this carries the conceit yet again of a ‘post gender age’ which is about a close to the truth as it was when Obama in 2009 declared us to be living in a post partisan age.

Hopefully there are many more like Katie Hill out there.

UPDATE: I guess this gives me the opportunity to quote Keynes: When the facts change I change my mind what do you do sir?

I’ve had to change my mind on the leadership of both Schumer and Pelosi in 2019.

Start with Schumer:

Overall it now seems quite arguable that the Dems were not nearly aggressive enough in the Kavanaugh fight and that it was Schumer who counseled them to pull  their punches.

Indeed my basis for changing my mind is Ryan Grim’s book that took a deep dive into the subject and it’s clear that Grim himself had something of a mind change.

On July 9, Grim had written a story for the Intercept that Schumer had warned the Dems need to fight Kavanaugh hard for pay the price with the base. 

I don’t actually agree with this:

“Schumer has told colleagues that reviving complaints about the Garland process will be ineffective, referring to Republicans’ refusal to consider Barack Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland. Instead the party needs to attack the nominee specifically, Schumer’s team has advised Senate offices, according to Democratic aides who requested anonymity because they are not authorized to speak publicly.”

The trouble is this is just one more case of the GOP destroying norms and the Dems just turning the other cheek. If even the Democrats stop discussing the theft of Garland’s seat then it has become totally normalized and accepted-for Republicans-to act this way. To be clear only Republicans as, of course, squeamish leaders like Schumer won’t do anything to breach the norms; there is a current movement among the progressive base to end the filibuster and court packing-to do court packing we’d need to overturn the filibuster. I fully support this movement and Harry Reid has now endorsed scrapping the filibuster but can you imagine Schumer doing it?

As for court packing-if you rule that out it will be another generation before liberals have a prayer of a non Right wing Supreme Court. No, simply winning in 2020 and appointing their own Justices isn’t enough: the oldest Justices are liberals-RBG(86) and John Stevens(79). Clarence Thomas as the oldest conservative on the Court is still only 71.

But regarding Schumer, the idea suggested in the tweet above by my friend and fellow resister Charlotte Clymer that Schumer’s ‘leadership style doesn’t exist’ might seem harsh but it’s in line with Democrats in his own caucus say.

Whipping those Senate votes into line will require Schumer to push his colleagues in ways he never has before. “Chuck has spent his career trying to make everyone of his colleagues happy and telling them what they want to hear,” said one Democratic senator, speaking anonymously so as not to anger the party’s Senate leader. “There’s no sense of leadership. It just feel as if everyone is in a big tent, just staying where they are, doing whatever they feel is in their best interests.”

FN: That’s by definition the opposite of what leadership is-where you unify a group of people with various, disparate, separate individual agendas around one larger agenda.

This is why even if the Dems do take back the Senate in 2020-and that will be an uphill fight-there’s no guarantee they do the right thing-end the filibuster and generally flex their majority muscle.

But in any case Grim’s piece in July, 2018 gave you cause for optimism-based upon it Schumer was girding his Senate Democrats for a ‘brutal fight.’

However, Grim’s book published in June of 2019 gives us quite a different picture-Schumer may have claimed publicly that the Dems must put up a brutal fight but what he was telling his members behind the scene was quite different-basically the opposite. 

“A new book by The Intercept’s Ryan Grim provides damning new insight into Senate Democrats’ abject failure to meaningfully oppose Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination, with Grim reporting that Chuck Schumer instructed his party to basically sit on its hands, lest the Republicans weaponize any attacks on Kavanaugh.”

This sounds an awful lot like the Pelosi argument of 2019-impeaching the fake ‘President’ will only play into his hands by inciting his base. What Pelosi and Schumer both need to do is read this poll analysis which shows that 2020 is about turnout not persuading the other side.

But the fear of the Pelosis and Schumers of the world in ‘ginning up the GOP base’ is based on the illusion that to beat Trump in 2020 you need some of his supporters or at least GOP leaning independents. This is false-in truth there is and has always been an anti Trump majority and the key to winning in 2020 is mobilizing this anti Trump majority not reaching out to the Deplorables.

As New York reported late Tuesday afternoon, Grim’s reporting comes in his new book, We’ve Got People: From Jesse Jackson to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the End of Big Money and the Rise of a Movement, which is out now. Per the site, Grim reported that Schumer “repeatedly told outside allies that a furious stand against Kavanaugh would enrage Trump supporters and only disappoint progressive voters. We have no power, he explained repeatedly.”

We have no power. Schumer missed his calling as a motivational speaker! Do you think that’s what Mitch McConnell was saying in 2009? No he was saying the opposite-and his GOP even though in the minority did manage to gum up the works and make every forward movement of the ball for Team Obama difficult. Sorry but if nothing else you have to question Schumer’s imagination.

And what we’ve seen in 2019 is that even with all the power as the House Dems now have, they still act like the minority party afraid of their own shadows-in a crouching position ‘He’s self impeaching just win 2020.’

Indeed, the Senate Dems were basically punting their opposition until the release of Dr. Christine Ford’s letter forced their hand. What’s pretty ironic is that the GOP ended up demonizing Diane Feinstein-they wrongly accused her of leaking it and claimed she had timed it by releasing the letter so late so as to gum up the process.

Look-I wish she had shown the gumption to leak the letter, but she clearly didn’t. Indeed, she was going to let it gather dust in a closet somewhere while Chuck Grassley and #MoscowMitch rammed Kavanaugh through.

“Grim reports that Senator Dianne Feinstein failed to act on a letter from Blasey Ford, her constituent, for weeks, despite pressure from fellow California senator Kamala Harris. ”

Score one for Kamala Harris who ought to discuss this episode in her campaign-she doesn’t have to directly knock Feinstein if she doesn’t want to just focus on why she thought it was essential Dr. Ford’s voice wasn’t silenced-as clearly Feinstein was happy enough to do! Seriously-the base will reward whoever advocates a tougher line with Trump; if you want to trace the rise of Elizabeth Warren it started with her clear and unequivocal call to #ImpeachtheMFer.

“The office of Representative Anna Eshoo forwarded the letter, which described her allegation against Kavanaugh, to Feinstein on July 30. However, it only became public in mid-September, after Grim reported on its existence in The Intercept. In his book, Grim casts doubt on Feinstein’s explanation for the delay — that Blasey Ford had requested anonymity — noting that her argument “ignored that Blasey Ford had already taken repeated steps to come forward, had already told friends she planned to do so, had already come forward to two congressional offices and reached out to the press, and was only asking for confidentiality until she and Feinstein spoke.”

The irony is that Feinstein’s copout of an explanation-she was keeping it private at Dr. Ford’s request-was used by Chuck Grassley and Friends to cast all kinds of dark aspersions at Feinstein. In a way this is kind of a fitting metaphor of the Dem leadership strategy in general-like Ryan Cooper says they keep waiting for the public to reward them with responsibility points for one sided displays of good faith. 

Feinstein’s evasions were not political hardball but yet another one sided display of good faith but rather than getting her responsibility points she was demonized and slandered by the GOP for playing hardball when she was actually playing quite the opposite.

More from Splinter regarding Feinstein:

“Blasey Ford’s letter didn’t just contain information that could jeopardize the nomination of a man who posed a threat to Roe v. Wade. Its very existence implied some moral obligation on the part of its recipients: Blasey Ford wrote the letter, and initially contacted Eshoo, because she wanted to be heard. If Feinstein understood Blasey Ford’s intentions, why did she hesitate to reveal the letter? Grim offers an answer, reinforced by contemporaneous reporting from The New Yorker. Feinstein, the magazine reported, believed her party “would be better off focusing on legal, rather than personal, issues in their questioning of Kavanaugh.” There are other, more cynical possibilities for her delay. The senator also faced a challenge to her reelection bid: Fellow Democrat Kevin de Leon was running against her from the left. As Grim notes, Feinstein needed conservative votes to shore up her lead in the state’s general election. A combative posture toward Kavanaugh didn’t exactly serve her interests.”

Ford herself clearly wanted the information public-her timing was based on her not wanting to see this man who had sexually assaulted  her rewarded with a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court.

Again as I argued above, let’s not put too fine a point on this: Feinstein was willing to silence Ford’s voice-whatever the motivation in doing so.

As for Schumer-this is how events unfolded. First he told his Senate Dems they have no power so basically don’t expend too much energy against Kavanaugh-despite the affront of the stolen seat, Kavanaugh’s own history of dealing with hacked emails, his radically anti abortion stance, his history with Ken Starr setting up a perjury trap for Bill Clinton, his own words suggesting that the Trump-Russia investigation was a ‘with hunt’-and that the main reason Trump chose Kavanaugh was plausibly to protect him from Russia.

But then Dr. Ford’s letter emerged and a real fight ensued. Of course, the letter came out despite the Dem leaders-Feinstein was prepared to let Kvanaugh get ‘rammed through’ without letting the public know of the accusations; this is what Ford really feared-again that she would be silenced.

So when it came out and Dr. Ford gave that powerful testimony what was Schumer’s advice then? 

So what message was he rallying the troops around behind closed doors instead? According to New York (emphasis theirs), basically nothing:

For a moment, it looked like the professor’s decision to testify — though she knew it would be painful and possibly even dangerous — might accomplish what Democratic leaders thought impossible. Grim reports that when the Democrats gathered on September 27, shortly after Blasey Ford’s gripping testimony, Schumer advised his caucus to do nothing. “There was no way, he said, that Kavanaugh could survive. That meant that the smartest Democratic move at this moment was to not get in the way,” Grim writes. “Don’t do anything, he told Judiciary Committee members, that could screw this up and give Republicans some way to paint Kavanaugh as the victim. Stand down, he said.”

Simply “no way” Kavanaugh could survive, Schumer reportedly said, as millions of women around the country now fear for the future of Roe v. Wade. “Don’t do anything” that could allow Republicans—always the stewards of good faith politics—to “paint Kavanaugh as the victim,” he reportedly said. They did that in spades anyway, and were quite likely always going to, even if Democrats had waged a fiercer war on the nomination and were still ultimately unsuccessful.”

Do nothing. That’s always the preference of the Dem leaders-do nothing or as little as possible and things will somehow all work out. Confronting an accused sexual predator makes the accused sexual predator a victim. It’s amazing but this has been verbatim Pelosi’s narrative-impeaching Trump or being too tough on him only makes him the victim. Yeah, I mean that’s what kept Hitler in power for so long-the opposition was too tough on him, made him the martyr.

Based on this why prosecute rapists and murderers-it only makes them the martyr-not their victims!

“The revelations in Grim’s book raise interesting questions, which remain relevant with the Democrats’ moderate and more activist wings still split over what tactics to use in countering the Trump administration. If nothing else, Schumer, Feinstein, and their colleagues had a moral obligation to press the fight on Kavanaugh, both for Blasey Ford and for their constituents, who will suffer under the weight of the conservative Supreme Court. By the end of the Kavanaugh hearings, Grim wrote, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell “had a single purpose” in pursuing the nomination: spite, directed mainly at the activists who’d fought so long and so hard to block Kavanaugh from the Court. “It was to look those protesters in the eye and say, in as clear a voice as possible: No, you don’t matter,” he continued. But they did matter, and they still matter, and they deserve a party whose leaders aren’t afraid to agree.

But do they matter for Schumer and Pelosi?

So much for Schumer who again is a nice guy but perhaps not the leader for the time we’re living in-a racist, xenophobic, obstructive, authoritarian ‘President’ who didn’t ‘win’ his Office legitimately. Schumer is the leader of Congresses past a time when collegiality and bipartisanship reigned-allegedly though when you look more closely even then it was as much myth as reality.

As for Speaker Pelosi it pains me to say it-both because it may be that I was dead wrong and because I do think she’s had a great career with many accomplishments-but the jury is still very much out on her-and wether I and others on Democratic Twitter erred on endorsing her so full throatedly for Speaker again.

Is she too the Speaker for Congresses Past? During the first eight months of Dem leadership it’s often seemed that the only person who might want to see Trump impeached less than her is Trump himself. At every turn she came up with neologisms and canards to focus responsibility for holding Trump accountable onto someone other than she and her Democratic caucus-the voters-it’s too divisive for the country just beat him in 2020-the courts-I don’t want him impeached I want him in prison-Trump himself-he’s just not worth it and he ‘s self-impeaching-in other words she doesn’t have to impeach him as he’s doing it himself-or best of all he want’s to be impeached-so we’ll be meanies and refuse to impeach him-that will show him.

There remains a debate among the Dem base and #Resistance-is she playing 24 dimensional chess with a plan to set herself up as the reluctant impeacher so she has maximum moral authority when she does impeach him? Or is she simply running out the clock?

What’s clear is that whatever her true, ultimate intent is-is she waiting for her caucus or is her mind made up that she will oppose impeachment no matter what?-her Democratic caucus is getting there; by Politico’s count there are now 135 Democrats in favor of impeachment.

Ironically all Pelosi’s opponents when she was running for Speaker again-Seth Moulton, Tim Ryan, Marcia Fudge, Kathleen Rice-now favor impeachment. If only they’d made that and not the Republicans always attack her the basis of their campaign maybe they’d have had more success-certainly if I’d known she was a confirmed  impeachment phobe who wouldn’t budge no matter what he’s guilty of I would not have supported her.

Notice that these days the Republicans don’t attack her much-after all she seems to have their back; Trump has actually thanked her for protecting him from impeachment. 

That’s not something that’s going to make her popular with the Dem base. I just hope those who believe she’s simply a brilliant political tactician who sees the board more clearly than anyone else and who will impeach Trump at the right time are right-if she gets this wrong history will not put her in auspicious company-the Neville Chamberlain of the 21st century.

UPDATE: But if you want to see what-lack of-leadership looks like see Richard Neal’s utter failure on securing Trump’s tax return before the 2020 election-what possible use is it if he gets it after? By then wether Trump wins or loses in 2020 he will have again violated the norm of releasing his tax returns with no consequence. And knowing the Democrats if he does lose in 2020 they will be in a rush to turn the page and to not stop thinking about tomorrow-like Bill Clinton chose to do in 1993 regarding the assorted Iran-Contra and Iran scandals and Obama did in 2009 regarding the Bush-Cheney criminals.

Don’t get me wrong even in that case it would be worth going through Trump’s tax returns with a fine tooth comb-and releasing them publicly. But as long as Neal is the Chairman I’m not holding my breath.

Neal’s failure here is simply appalling.

OTOH he has eschewed NY’s thoughtful gift of Trump’s state returns under the premise that they could hurt the case for the federal returns. OTOH he has slow walked the fight for the federal returns throughout.

It took him four months-until April-before he even asked for the tax returns. After Steve Mnuchin refused to hand them over as the law directs him too, he waited another four months to actually take it to court. So now predictably there’s probably not enough time to get them before 2020.

Neal has said pursuing the New York returns could undermine the House’s argument in seeking the federal returns, which would provide a wider look into the president’s financial dealings.

The case is now filed in U.S. District Court. Regardless of the outcome at that level, it is likely to then be appealed to the D.C. Court of Appeals and from there to the Supreme Court. Each of those cases could take months.

“More likely than not, this will not get decided or argued until it’s too late for the election,” said Sandick, the former U.S. attorney.

Neal has never promised to resolve the tax returns case by a certain date. He has said the committee had to be deliberate to improve its odds of securing the returns, carefully constructing a case to demonstrate it had no choice but to sue the administration.

Neal has also consistently stressed he is following the advice of his lawyers, including on timing, and that his focus is on reviewing the IRS’s program for auditing the president and vice president.

Neal’s defenders say he is focused on building a case that Democrats can win in court, rather than rush unprepared into a lawsuit that gets thrown out.

“This is an example of some on the Democratic left being unrealistic,” said former congressman Barney Frank (D-Mass.), a longtime colleague of Neal’s. “I think [Neal] is skeptical of gestures that make us feel good but won’t go anywhere.”

Huh? If he had accepted NY’s thoughtful gift we’d have access to his state returns. That’s ‘going somewhere.’ It’s Neal’s tortoise act that’s not going anywhere-there’s no value in this if it gets passed the 2020 election. It’s not as he says an ‘artificial date’-it’s the only thing that matters as this is meant to uphold the norm that every President releases his/her tax returns. If some day after Trump is in office we get them-of course, Neal hasn’t even promised to release them publicly-that has zero value.

Neal it turns out is the worst possible person to run this committee.

The only saving grace is Neal is getting primaried.

https://twitter.com/AlexBMorse/status/1164710629581697024

I don’t live in Mass anymore but I too have now chipped in-in 1992 Al Gore declared it’s time for them to go. If it’s time for anyone to go its Richie Neal.

On balance Neal’s stunning blooper makes it official-as Seth Moulton correctly states the Democrats are failing on impeachment and failing on accountability-you don’t think Neal’s running out the clock on the tax returns doesn’t presage Pelosi and Friends running it out on impeachment?

Sorry to have to be cynical and hope I’m wrong.

UPDATE: Glad to be able to say there are some good developments in the House

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