Pelosi Had an Easy Job This Time

During and after the vote last night, numerous pundits and passers-by were praising Nancy Pelosi, contrasting her "ability" to keep her caucus unified with the chaos on John Boehner's side of the aisle. Here, for example, is Ian Millhiser:

Nancy Pelosi controls 198 votes in the House.
John Boehner controls 87.
#leadership

 Hogwash.

Nancy Pelosi was an excellent Speaker -- as I've said, I rank her second only to Tip O'Neill in the modern era, and that's giving him points because he had to figure it out for the first time (since he was the first of the true modern Speakers; the reform era ran from 1959 to 1975). So this isn't anything against her.

But really: House Minority Leader is one of the easiest jobs in Washington. Keeping her party unified against an obviously losing strategy by a small minority of the most unpopular Republicans? C'mon, that's no achievement. You know who was able to lead an absolutely unified party? John Boehner, in 2009 and 2010. He hasn't suddenly lost his touch; it's just a different, and much harder, job.

And I apologize for taking the wording of a tweet too seriously, but neither Pelosi or Boehner or any other leader "controls" votes in Congress. Not in any kind of strong sense. We're talking about 435 independent, autonomous actors. Yes, Speakers have some influence on what individual Members do (far more than Senate party leaders do), but it only goes so far. They start to go very far from what the party wants, and..well, ask Jim Wright and Newt Gingrich how long a Speaker lasts who tries to "control" too much. Indeed: one of the reasons Pelosi was highly successful as Speaker is that she didn't attempt to be the dictator of the House.

Again: nothing against Pelosi. She was excellent when it counted. But this is all evidence not for Pelosi's skills and Boehner's lack of skills, but that structural things matter more than individual skills in many cases.

Boehner's problem isn't that he's a poor Speaker. His problem is that he has 232 Republicans, and a good 50 to 100 of them want no distance between themselves and Louie Gohmert. If Nancy Pelosi had been forced to deal with 50 to 100 Members who wanted no distance between themselves and Dennis Kucinich (or Cynthia McKinney), and if Kucinich and McKinney defined themselves in large part by establishing a distance between themselves and the "Democratic establishment"...well, that's a much harder job than she actually had. And that's only the beginning of the structural differences.

One more time: Pelosi was an excellent Speaker. But her skills just don't explain much of what's been happening in the House this month.

Read Stuff, You Should

Happy Birthday to Mark Allen Shepherd, 52.

And on to the good stuff:

1. Really nice 5 Myths column from Tom Mann and Norm Ornstein about the Ignominious 112th. Also, from earlier last week, a nice one from Ezra Klein on the 112th.

2. Speaker elections scholar Jeffrey Jenkins on Nancy Pelosi, trend-setter.

3. Ashley Parker on what's up with Paul Ryan.

4. The House has a new history site.

5. And is steroids nonsense really just another example of the evils of baby boomers? I don't know, but Scott Lemieux makes the case.

Sunday Question for Liberals

I last asked about this a year ago, when Nancy Pelosi had just turned 71. She's now 72. She was, in my view, an extremely effective Speaker -- but is it time for Democrats to look to replace her as their House leader in the next Congress, or should they try to keep her as long as they can (or at last until the 2014 elections)?

Read Stuff, You Should

Happy Birthday to Nancy Pelosi, the former Speaker of the House, 72.

The good stuff:

1. Health care. Walter Dellinger has "five myths" about ACA; all about health care costs, by Sarah Kliff; and Jonathan Cohn wishes the law a happy birthday.

2. For fun: Kliff on the business of standing in line to watch the Supremes at work.

3. Andrew Sprung responds to Brendan Nyhan's piece about Etch-a-Sketch. I think Sprung has a pretty good argument for how the gaffe should be properly interpreted...but I don't agree with him about the staying power of this one. I think it puts a name on something that was out there anyway, and that's about it.

4. The conservative reaction to Barack Obama's comments on Trayvon Martin, by Adam Serwer.

5. And back to health care: Dahlia Lithwick argues that the ACA case is just a sideshow; the real work of the Roberts Court will be elsewhere, and it's going to matter.

Revised Demographic Count of JSC Members

The last Joint Select Committee members were named, and just as I was getting ready to write this item I checked the Twitter machine, and alas David Dayen totally beat me to it:

These House Dem selections for SuperCongress are really Nancy Pelosi, Nancy Pelosi and Nancy Pelosi. All leadership figures.

And see, I was all ready to do a post that the demographic counts that were popping up earlier were all wrong because the adjusted count for the House should account for that Pelosi picked herself for all three spots. No, really, I was gonna.

Dayen's story on it, which (I think correctly) emphasizes the leadership ties of the entire group, is here. The three Democrats are James Clyburn, Xavier Becerra, and Chris Van Hollen.

Just to review...the way this works now is that the committee will most likely deadlock. It is possible that a larger deal will be struck outside the Joint Select Committee (that is, basically between Barack Obama and John Boehner, with both needing backing from their parties, which is why it's not likely to happen); if that happens before the deadline, then the committee will certainly go along (with perhaps a few dissents) and the debt limit deal procedures will be used to pass it. If not, then we'll get the trigger...after which we'll have attempts to pass something to replace the trigger, but those attempts will not have the parliamentary advantages of a JSC solution.

It's highly unlikely that a one-person defection on either side could lead to a deal that would win in both the House and the Senate. Well, I suppose one could be more specific: a deal produced by six Democrats and one Republican defector would have no chance whatsoever in the House. A deal produced by six Republicans and one Democratic defector would have a very slim, but non-zero, chance of passing in the Senate (and the chances of that kind of defection from either side are very, very small).

Other than whether they might defect, do the individuals on the JSC matter at all? Perhaps. They might do some work identifying future possible consensus spending cuts, or even future possible tax increases, that might then be included in some future deal. And if that's the case, the committee members probably have some leeway in how they put that together. But anything more is, I'd say, very unlikely.

Sunday Question for Liberals

Who would you like to be the next Speaker of the House? If the answer is Nancy Pelosi (b. 1940, so she just turned 71), who is your second choice?

The Pelosi Defections

I'll say right up top: I known nothing about this beyond what's been reported, and I have a possibly unhealthy bias in favor of believing that Nancy Pelosi knows what she's doing (a bias developed, I should say, only from watching her succeed on the House floor time after time).

That said: my interpretation of yesterday's highly unusual defections on the vote for Speaker is that they indicate only a decision by Democrats -- and probably more or less sanctioned by the new Minority Leader -- to spin themselves as local heroes, not captives of Washington.  They don't, I'm thinking, indicate any dissatisfaction with Pelosi.  If there's one thing that Pelosi has always been good at, it's allowing her caucus to duck tough votes when it didn't matter, but always coming up with the votes when she needs them.  I believe, and I'd like to think, that she cares more about the (secret) vote that mattered back in November to ensure she would be Minority Leader, than the public vote yesterday that was just for show.

I'm still convinced that she's very solidly supported by House Democrats.  Of course, the other way of looking at it is that this is just one in what will be a long series of votes in which it really doesn't matter what the House Democrats do -- and that the job of Minority Leader in the U.S. House of Representatives is pretty useless, even with divided government. 

Control in the House

Via Ezra, Naftali Bendavid and Patrick O'Connor have an interesting article about incoming Speaker John Boehner in the WSJ that is somewhat helpful in its reporting, but unfortunately gets important things wrong about the House.

There are really a couple of dimensions that are important here, and the article doesn't separate them.  One is about centralization, and the question of how influence is apportioned under the rules between two different hierarchies in the House: the party leadership, and the committee system.  This is quite important, and does indeed vary tremendously between Speakers, with (to generalize a bit) Newt Gingrich and Jim Wright at one extreme, Tom Foley and Denny Hastert at the other, and Tip O'Neill and Nancy Pelosi successfully finding the sweet spot in the middle.

A second question, very separate from the first, is about the relationship between the majority and minority parties. Incoming majority parties in 1995, 2007, and now 2011 have pledged a variety of protections for the new minority party, such as the ability to offer amendments on the House floor and various types of open government.  However, once the rush of events begins, majorities invariably backslide on these promises.  That's not to say that there are no important reforms in this area, or that specific measures are irrelevant.  But the fundamental nature of the modern House is majority party rule, and that's not going to change any time soon.

The two questions are related a bit, in that a Congress in which committees are more important is probably a Congress that gives relatively more opportunity to minority party Members.  But in an era of partisan polarization, that's only going to be marginally true.

So the dimension that gives Speaker Boehner real choices to make is party leadership vs. committees.  There, it's wrong to lump Gingrich and Pelosi together (as Bendavid and O'Connor do).  Gingrich, who tried to centralize power in the Speakership, faced frequent and early revolts within his party, and once his special claim to electoral brilliance was exposed as a fraud the party rapidly ended his leadership career.  Pelosi, who opted for a much more balanced approach, has never faced a real internal threat.

To this point, Boehner seems to me to be following the O'Neill/Pelosi path.  Over time, that's not apt to lead to more openness or more rights for Democrats in the Republican House.  But it has proven to be the path that has the best chance of keeping Republican Members happy.

Nancy Pelosi Is Unpopular. What Matters Is Whether She's Good.

William Galston writes about the outgoing Speaker's poor polling numbers:

This is especially significant because, other than President Obama, Nancy Pelosi is the best-known and most visible public face of the Democratic Party.

...and other than Barry Bonds, Bobby Bonds Jr. was the best ballplayer son of Bobby Bonds.

It's early yet in postelection analysis, but I'll take any wager offered that at the end of the day, opinions of Nancy Pelosi will turn out to have absolutely no explanatory power on the 2010 vote.  Zero.

Now, one can make the case that the policy choices the Democrats made in 2009-2010 hurt them.  And one could even make the case that Pelosi moved House Democrats too far to the left, although I think that's a lot harder to show; I don't think there's a lot of evidence that what they actually did is far to the left of where House moderates are.  For example, as far as I know no Member of the House got in trouble for supporting radical stuff in the original House health care bill that was stripped by the Senate.  Whatever the effects of health care on the 2010 elections, it was based on a bill that won the support of Evan Bayh, Joe Lieberman, and Ben Nelson. 

Now, I do think that Dave Weigel has some good questions about Pelosi, including:

Progressives have convinced themselves that Pelosi's Democrats were unfairly punished because the Senate didn't act on the legislation she passed. Well, sure. But I assume she could have gotten senators on the phone.to ask whether the bills she was passing had chances of success. What was the point of passing a cap and trade bill far more painful to coal country and business than the one that Democrats knew could get through the Senate? 

It's a good question -- but there may be a good answer.  It may be that Pelosi, Harry Reid, and the White House were in fact working closely on climate/energy, but someone -- not Pelosi -- did a lousy job of counting votes in the Senate.  It could be that the overwhelming majority of the House Democratic caucus knew exactly what was likely, but still wanted to take the risk of passing the bill.  I don't know, and I'd love to see good research about House/Senate relations during the 111th Congress.  I do think there's a good chance that Pelosi and Reid and the White House erred repeatedly in that area, but  we need more information.

Regardless, that's all about how good Pelosi really is at playing the inside game.  Galston considers it to be "common sense" that the public relations aspects of the job are more important, but he's going to need some evidence for that beyond Pelosi's lousy poll ratings.  There's no reason to believe that voters thought they were choosing a Speaker when they voted, and lots of evidence over the years that such things are unlikely to matter.  Even if she is the second most visible Democrat.

Oy, Bai

Yeah, he's at it again.  Fortunately, Ed Kilgore is too, quickly debunking Matt Bai's latest.

The one thing that I'd emphasize that Kilgore doesn't really talk about: Congressional party leadership contests are rarely decided on ideology.  They just aren't.  Yes, Nancy Pelosi is almost certainly more liberal in her position as Member of the House than Steny Hoyer (although it's anyone's guess whether that's a matter of their deepest convictions or their constituencies), but Speaker Pelosi -- or, now, Minority Leader Pelosi -- isn't going to be significantly more liberal than Minority Leader Hoyer.  To hold that job, one has to keep the House Democratic Caucus happy, and what's going to keep the bulk of the House Democratic Caucus happy (on ideology) is being a mainstream liberal.  Anyone who wants the job will rapidly adjust their issue positions to match.

What really determines these sorts of elections is internal caucus stuff: is the Speaker (or Minority Leader) good at balancing committee action with party leadership influence; is she a good strategist; does she protect Members from tough votes as much as possible; is she a good fundraiser; and then a whole lot of interpersonal stuff, everything from whether the candidate gets along well with the caucus to scheduling.  All that, plus plenty of called in favors and logrolling.

Every time these leadership transitions come up, much of the press treats them as proxies for some larger battle.  They relegate quotations from actual Congressional insiders about how it's actually about which candidate delivered a good parking space or delivered on a family-friendly schedule or allowed a Member to cast a key vote against some important bill because she secured enough votes elsewhere to the bottom of the story, and treat them as quaint little sidebar anecdotes.  They're not.  Those anecdotes are the real story; ideology is usually (sorry) a red herring.

Reform 1: Change in the House?

The big news about Congressional reform lately has been over on the Senate side, but I'll remind everyone that Tom Mann and Norm Ornstein's The Broken Branch, published just before the Democratic sweep of 2006, probably spent more time on the House.  Will House reform return?

I'll begin with the punch line: since about 1975, the House of Representatives has been the one part of the US government in which party majorities rule.  That's not going to change in 2011-2012.  However, during that time the House has fluctuated between majority party rule and something close to majority party leadership tyranny, and it's at least possible that the next Congress will lean towards the former.  

To a large extent, the seemingly systematic corruption scandals in the DeLay House appear to be a thing of the past.  Still, much of the Mann/Ornstein agenda is still relevant now.   Generally, the critique from Mann and Ornstein, shared by many observers, was: not enough use of regular order and deliberative procedures, sometimes reaching the point of massive arbitrary abuse on the House floor; too much authority centralized with party leadership instead of dispersed to the committees; and, not enough opportunity for the minority party to offer its views.

Unlike the last time the GOP gained control of the House, this time Congressional reform was not among their main talking points.  Still, it's possible to see reforms, some of them positive, happening.  There's not much in the GOP "Pledge" beyond a bunch of silly symbolic stuff (i.e. "read the bill" rhetoric). 

The real process reforms in there have only a slim change of being enacted and staying enacted: there's some verbiage about avoiding large omnibus bills and about having more open rules.  It is likely that a smaller agenda will mean smaller bills, but that's about policy, not process; if it improves the GOP negotiating position to include multiple items in an omnibus bill, you can expect them to do so, regardless of what they said in 2009.  I also expect Republicans, whatever they say now, to use the Rules Committee to prevent tough votes for themselves while manufacturing as many tough votes for the remaining marginal Democrats as possible. 

Beyond that, Republicans in the Pledge and elsewhere do criticize Nancy Pelosi for centralizing House governance.  Historically, that's mistaken, I believe.  Still, many House observers believe that a better balance between the committees and the leadership would be a good thing.  Will that happen under the Republicans?  I think it's possible.


On smaller issues, I don't want to predict the outcome of the current GOP battle over an earmarks ban, but I think it's safe to say that they won't repeat the massive explosion of earmarks that took place the last time Republicans ran the Congress.  Republicans are also promising open government; as usual, that will last only until real negotiations have to take place, at which point they'll figure out how to have those deals made away from the cameras, whether or not it involves technically breaking those promises or not. 

Overall, I've said several times that in my view, Nancy Pelosi was the first Speaker to maintain a healthy balance between party and committee leadership since Tip O'Neill (and therefore only the second under current House rules and norms), while continuing the tradition of giving the minority party less and less ability to influence legislation or even have their views debated.  If I had to guess, I would expect John Boehner to attempt to follow her example, and to avoid the centralizing pattern practiced by Jim Wright and, most notably, Newt Gingrich.  If that's the case, then the committees will continue to be relatively important, but the Democrats will be thoroughly irrelevant and quite frustrated.

Catch of the Day

Greg Sargent, who also gets some very sensible quotes from Norm Ornstein about Nancy Pelosi's prospective strengths as Minority Leader, notices in the wake of today's NYT editorial about her:

One other thing: It turns out this isn't the first time The New York Times has opposed Pelosi for minority leader. Back in 2002 the paper editorialized against her candidacy on the same grounds as today, noting archly that she "isn't a powerhouse on television."

As Sargent goes on to say, none of that stopped the Dems, with Pelosi as Minority Leader, from winning the 2006 elections.  

Overall, I don't think that House Minority Leader is a very important job...what's more at stake here is who would become Speaker if the Democrats have a rapid comeback in the next cycle or so.  Still, there are a couple of obvious things to point out.  First, what really matters in any of these positions is how effective leaders are inside Congress, not on TV.  The GOP just won a huge landslide despite having, as far as I can tell, practically no one among their politicians who could effectively make their case on television.  Surely not John Boehner -- I think he's a good pol, but can you imagine anyone more poorly suited to leading a populist charge than John Boehner?  And surely not Mitch McConnell, either.  Just as neither Harry Reid or, perhaps, Nancy Pelosi was a terrific messenger in 2006, and it didn't matter at all.

Second, I'm not much for shows of backbone, but I do think it would be foolish for Democrats to drop their leaders any time they become controversial.  That's just an invitation for Republicans to choose Democratic leaders, disqualifying anyone who appears effective.  The Times claims that "If Ms. Pelosi had been a more persuasive communicator, she could have batted away the ludicrous caricature of her painted by Republicans across the country as some kind of fur-hatted commissar jamming her diktats down the public’s throat."  But that's simply not true for those who listen to Rush and Beck; it doesn't matter a bit how well Pelosi sells her message, since those people are not listening.  As for the rest of the nation, Pelosi is unpopular to the extent that people are unhappy with a terrible economy and people generally don't like Congress, anyway.  Replace her with someone else, and that person will promptly be demonized, as well.

Follow the Leader

Two quick notes, one from each party and one from each chamber:

First, I recommend an excellent post by Matt Yglesias about the relative lack of importance of Mitch McConnell in the new scheme of things. The only thing that I'd add is that the press generally overrates the importance of Senate party leaders to begin with, so start with that, and combine with what Yglesias says about the partisan context, and there you have it.

Second, over on the House side, almost nothing the minority party does is very important, but nevertheless I'm glad to see Nancy Pelosi sticking around for Minority Leader because...well, because I get to say "told you."  Me, on October 7:

I've seen some outsider speculation about what Nancy Pelosi would do if the Democrats lose the House, but so far I don't think I've seen any actual whispers against her that seem to come from inside her caucus.  As far as I can tell, she can have Minority Leader if she wants it (and my guess is that she will, especially if modest gains in 2012 would put her back in the big chair).

One of the easiest calls I've made.  Pelosi is a very, very good pol, and while I'm not a reporter and have no inside information, nothing has been reported that sounds even remotely like unhappiness with her.  Yes, I know that some of the conservatives members of the caucus engage in a little liberal-bashing at her expense, but they and everyone know that the Democrats will have a liberal as their Leader in the House, and whoever that is will be demonized by GOP attackers. 

Besides, in their hearts, I have no doubt that Pelosi isn't even close to the top of the list of who House Democrats really blame for the 2010 cycle.  My guess is that #3 on that list is Barack Obama; #2 is Rahm Emanuel; and, by far, lapping the field, #1 is the United States Senate. 

Dogs, Not Barking

An occasional item about items that have not been in the news -- which is, therefore, newsworthy.

1.  I've seen some outsider speculation about what Nancy Pelosi would do if the Democrats lose the House, but so far I don't think I've seen any actual whispers against her that seem to come from inside her caucus.  As far as I can tell, she can have Minority Leader if she wants it (and my guess is that she will, especially if modest gains in 2012 would put her back in the big chair).

2.  Crime bill.  Remember when passing a crime bill was a major deal every even-numbered year?  You wouldn't think that crime decreasing would end that, but I guess it has. 

3.  Combined item: Obama administration scandals/Cabinet Secretaries leaving.  Haven't heard much on either count.  Remember, Obama is about to be hit with a huge wave of out-of-work Democratic politicians looking for high-profile jobs (what -- you think they'll all just become slimy lobbyists?). 

4.  I'm less sure about this one, but...as far as I know, there aren't any gay-baiting ballot measures this fall, and I'm not hearing a lot of gay-baiting from GOP candidates this time around, whether on marriage, DADT, or whatever.  If in fact that's the case, it's a significant item.

5.  I always finish with the silence out of the White House on the Fairness Doctrine, but I'm sort of thinking that gun control is actually a better one.  I know: both! 

MMM

I recommend Pete Davis's tribute to Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky.  I should note, however, that the fact that political junkies know her name today, over fifteen years after her critical vote, is yet another sign that Tom Foley wasn't a very good Speaker of the House. 

I suppose that Nancy Pelosi and the House whip operation are probably somewhat busy this week, but I do hope that they make time, or assign someone, to orchestrate the actual voting on the House floor for health care reform.  You know, so that some poor vulnerable first-term Member doesn't have to be identified as "the" vote that put health care over the top.  Now, I should back up a bit...first of all, I do not expect health care reform to be politically toxic in November; unlike the Clinton budget, which was pretty much all pain, health care reform has plenty of specific benefits for Members to tout, as the White House has been emphasizing recently.  And I do remember reading somewhere (sorry, no citation) that the Speaker has been trying to win by at least two votes, to avoid the problem of a single Member putting controversial legislation "over the top." 

Which is all very well and good and all, and perhaps the Speaker will get this done with plenty of votes to spare after all, but it not...I assume that the logical person to cast the vote that gets them to 216 would be John Dingell.  Or Nancy Pelosi, herself.  Or Henry Waxman.  Or perhaps Patrick Kennedy, clutching some talisman that belonged to his father.  Or a parade of them.  And before that, make sure that the last supposedly undecided Member to cast a vote for the bill is either in a safe seat or retiring. 

(Yes, of course, it's very easy to overstate the importance of this sort of thing; for all I know; MMM was doomed regardless of her vote on the budget, let alone how it was portrayed.  Still, might as well get the details right, no?).

Chicago-Style

All political activists believe the other party is far more ruthless than their own party (and, probably, believe that the other factions within their party are far more ruthless than their own faction).  Thus Republicans have been certain that Democrats were going to bully the "patch" portion of the health care bill through the Senate, having Joe Biden overrule the Senate parliamentarian and backing it up with majority support for precedents that let Democrats do whatever they like.


There still could be some of this (although I still doubt it), but at least in one case, if news reports are correct, Democrats are following the lead of the parliamentarian, not overruling him.  As Ezra Klein and others are reporting, the option of forcing the Senate to patch first is dead, a victim of the Senate parliamentarian.  Now, I thought that it was a bad idea in the first place, and I think the backup plan of passing the Senate bill via a self-executing rule is also a bad idea, but it's pretty clearly, from all the reporting, a bad idea that the House wanted.  And one that that they're not going to go through with because the Senate parliamentarian said no.

On the backup plan being a foolish idea, see Jonathan Cohn here, Ezra Klein here, or me here.  I don't think it's important, but it is foolish.  I do agree with Cohn that this is probably a bad idea driven by skittish Members of the caucus, not by Nancy Pelosi; she's probably just doing what she needs to do to get the votes.

Moving to a Vote

All of today's major news on health care reform was, I think, good news for those in favor of reform.  As I've been saying, as nice as the vote counts are, the real way to tell whether Nancy Pelosi thinks she has the votes is whether or not she moves the bill to the House floor...the more specific she is about a date, the more likely it is that she has the votes.  And so it matters quite a bit that she's now saying that voting will apparently begin on Thursday or Friday. As I've said, it would be highly unusual to take this step -- really, any of the steps in the last several weeks -- unless Pelosi was confident the bill was going to pass.  Of course, she could be wrong.  She might think that she has the votes, but find out otherwise, either in the next few days or even during the actual vote.  But that doesn't fit with what we've seen of this Speaker over the last few years.

In other health care news today, I recommend this Kevin Drum post about what happens after the bill passes, assuming it does pass.  I think he's absolutely right, except that I think he underestimates the chances of a public option being added fairly soon.  Depending, of course, on whether there are Democratic majorities in future Congresses, but once there are, they are going to be lousy with supporters of adding a public option.

Walk Right Through

Jonathan clubbers Chait and Cohn, as well as non-Jonathan Ezra Klein, and I'm sure lots of other heath care reform supporters are all upset at Rahm Emanuel because he's suggesting that Congress consider the jobs bill and the bank tax, and then watch the Super Bowl, and enjoy the Winter Olympics, and then hold off because it's an election year, and better check to make sure that that Mayan 2012 thing doesn't really happen, and wait for Haiti to fully recover and the Arabs and Israelis to reconcile, before finishing health care reform.  Fine; they're right that the White House isn't being very helpful.  That said...

The proper place to apply pressure remains the House of Representatives, which could pass health care reform this coming week if Democrats there are willing to do it, regardless of what the Senate or the White House say or do (and then, after pass, patch).  I'll repeat what I said earlier.  Nancy Pelosi says:

I've said to my colleagues, go in the door. The door's locked? Go to the gate. The gate's locked? Climb over the fence. It's too high? Pole vault in. That doesn't work? Parachute in. We have to get this done for the American people one way or another.

Speaker Pelosi, the front door is wide open.  Just get 218 of your friends together, and walk right through.

This Isn't the Revolt

I said earlier today that the pattern of party leadership that overreaches is that the rank-and-file up and revolt.  I'd like to say "Aha!" at the news that Congressional Progressive Caucus co-chair Rep. Raul Grijalva is upset about ping-pong, but I'm afraid that this is an entirely different phenomenon: a powerless, cranky back-bencher blowing off steam.  I haven't blogged about Grijalva before, mainly because he's just not that important, but he seems to get a disproportional share of attention from liberal bloggers, so I'll just say this: if Henry Waxman is happy with the process, then liberals (or progressives, whatever) should be happy.  The difference between Nancy Pelosi (who is following Tip O'Neill's lead) and Speakers such as Jim Wright and Newt Gingrich is that Pelosi knows how to keep powerful committee chairs happy. 

I'll clarify: it's of course true that there is a clear space to the left of mainstream liberals such as Waxman (and, for that matter, Pelosi).  I don't expect the far left to be very happy with what a Democratic Congress and a Democratic president do.  And they're certainly entitled to be as vocal as they can about it.  That's not really what's going on with the Congressional Progressive Caucus, which as far as I can tell isn't actually promoting different policies in most cases than the rest of the mainstream liberals in the Democratic caucus; they simply are carrying out a policy of reflexively saying "farther left" to whatever the Speaker and the committees can manage to pass.  Since everyone knows that their threats are just a bluff (their interests and preferences are pretty much identical to those of the mainstream Dems they complain about), it's hard to get very worked about about their bluster.

By the way, for those who do want to move Congress in a more liberal direction, I'd recommend reading these guys. 

Judean People's Front Crack Suicide Squad

Nancy Pelosi is receiving lots of love from liberal bloggers today, and rightly so. I'll modestly credit....hmmm...myself for calling this one back in early August, when I said that "in comparing 1993 with 2009, I think the best thing the Democrats have going for them is Nancy Pelosi in the Speaker's chair."

At the same time, liberals continue to be furious with Harry Reid -- furious enough to run ads against him in Nevada, where he stands an excellent chance of losing next November even if he can retain support of liberals. (Some) liberals think that's OK -- here's Firedoglake's Jane Hamsher, on how she'll feel if the Democrats don't get a public option (not health care -- a public option) through the Senate:

The Republicans terrorized the Democrats in the Senate in 2004 by taking out the Democratic Majority Leader Tom Daschle. It’s a good model. If that’s what it takes to wake the Democrats up, with Reid’s numbers — and the ensuing outpouring of rage at the destruction of the public option — it shouldn’t be that hard to do.

I don’t care if we have to recruit a Democratic primary challenger...And I sure don’t fucking care if Danny Tarkanian becomes the next Senator from Nevada, because at that point 60 votes don’t mean anything anyway.

As the Judean People's Front said, "That'll show 'em."

Where to start...

OK, first. The difference between Pelosi and Reid is not their ideological differences or their strength; it is their jobs, and the rules and context of the House and Senate. Simply put, in the House liberals have the votes to do more or less what they want to do; in the Senate, they do not. It's also the case that party leadership in the House has far more influence over the votes of individual Members than party leadership in the Senate has over individual Senators, thanks to the rules and incentives of the different institutions. If Pelosi and Reid changed places tomorrow, it would, I guess, soon be Pelosi who was under fire as a sell-out, and liberals would be building monuments to the boxer from Nevada.

Second, there's an enormous difference between trying to find a way to keep Olympia Snowe on board and what Jon Walker is calling "the absolute reign of Empress Olympia Snowe." Yes, the marginal votes (Snowe, Ben Nelson...you know the names) seem to have a massive influence at this stage -- but the basic agenda isn't their agenda; it's the agenda that Obama, Pelosi, and, yes, Harry Reid ran on.

Third point. Even if one believes that Harry Reid is cutting bad deals here and will wind up with a worse bill than, say, a Majority Leader Schumer might get -- isn't the proper solution to that problem an effort to oust him as Majority Leader, not to replace him with a Republican? Hamsher thinks she's emulating Republicans if she attacks Reid. Republicans, however, didn't target Bill Frist when Democrats obstructed them; they targeted, well, a Democrat! Mitch McConnell isn't up in 2010, but many Republicans are. The correct lesson from the difficulty in winning with 60 votes isn't to say that 59 or 58 votes would be just as good (and yes, that's what some are saying), but to keep working until you get 62 or 63 votes.

(BTW...I guess I'll have to update Monday's movie item now. Hadn't thought of this one at that point).