This page contains links to recent blogs by Lincoln Mitchell
Tagged with: Nancy Pelosi
In the half century since Dan White’s murderous actions, a lot has changed in San Francisco. George Moscone’s progressive vision for the city has faded as tech money has made a powerful mark there. However, the scars of that day have never fully healed and were reopened when the Pelosi’s home was attacked.
It is possible that it may just take more time for Trump and his supporters to fade away, but it is more likely that, even if the Democrats hold on to their majority in the House, Trumpism will further consolidate its hold on the GOP and continue to be a major and deeply damaging part of American politics for the foreseeable future.
The absence of a consensus that the events in question merit an investigation into the insurrection of January 6th are an obstacle to the process, but to let it preclude any commission or investigation would be to grant a victory to those who seek to minimize the insurrection. Accordingly, finding a nonpartisan way to probe the role of a former president who is still extremely popular in his own party is the essential conundrum facing the Speaker; and her success in this endeavor is important for anybody who believes that we need to learn more about the insurrection and why it occurred.
We are stuck with the unalterable reality that almost 70 million Americans, representing more than 45% of those who voted, looked around at the racism, democratic rollback, ties to the Kremlin and 230,000 deaths from Covid-19 and decided it was a good idea to give Donald Trump four more years in office.
As the impeachment inquiry heats up it still remains unlikely that Donald Trump will be removed from office by the Senate, but the motivations and goals of some of the major interests are becoming clear. Donald Trump, as has been the case for much of his presidency, is in survival mode. The crisis might be more acute now, but the basic framework is the same. Trump must, and will, fight with all his power to stay in office because removal by the Senate leads to humiliation, a lifetime of legal hassles and very possibly jail time for him and several members of his family.
The biggest political question is what impact a House impeachment and Senate acquittal would have on the presidential election. There is no way to tell, but we know that impeachment proceedings would last well into 2020, and the political impact well beyond that, thus making it very likely that the campaign would not primarily be about climate change, health care, education, guns or any other issues that are good for the Democrats, but about impeachment. That might help the Democrats, but it seems apparent that there is no guarantee of that. In fact, it may be precisely what Trump wants.
The health care bill has finally passed, but its meaning is still unclear. The process and debate around the health care bill has been extraordinary beginning with attempts at bipartisanship, swiftly moving to accusations of socialism and talk of death panels and culminating with bigotry and hate. It is likely that the lasting images of the Tea Party protests will be of protesters calling Barney Frank a f*gg#t and calling John Lewis, one of the last living icons of the Civil Rights Movement, the n-word. These images will help define the Tea Party movement as one of backwards looking reaction, rather than some kind of patriotic post-partisan movement as some Tea Party apologists have described it.
As a political phenomenon, the Tea Partiers are more colorful than mysterious. They are not really a new or post-party phenomenon, but are the latest incarnation of the populist conservative wing of the Republican Party, the political descendants of Richard Nixon's Silent Majority or the angry white men who catapulted Newt Gingrich and the Republican Party into control of the Congress in 1994. Tea Partiers will vote overwhelmingly for the Republican Party in November, or they will stay home. Very few will vote Democratic; and third party rumblings that have not yet died away, will do so in the next months.
The question this data raises is, so what? What is the value of Obama and his policies being more popular than his foes or his allies, particularly in a political system where Obama needs 60 Senate votes to accomplish anything? If Obama continues the strategic approach he used in his first year, including a willingness to bargain too early in the negotiating process, refusing to pressure Democrats in Congress -- particularly the Senate -- to support the party's position, and never going on the offensive against an aggressive Republican leadership, his popularity will not help him. However, popularity, particularly when it is bolstered by support for policies, can be an important asset to a president if it is used well.
The NRCC issued a statement this week attacking Nancy Pelosi for daring to question General McChrystal and calling on General McChrystal to "put her (Pelosi) in her place." The NRCC is charged with defeating the Democratic congress, so attacks on Nancy Pelosi and other Democratic leaders should not, in general, be cause for too much anger or surprise. However, the specific language used by the NRCC reveals the contempt with which the NRCC holds not just Speaker Pelosi, but the some of the basic ideas on which our democracy rests as well.
Republican talking points comparing the upcoming 2010 midterm elections with those in 1994 are, on the surface, somewhat persuasive. The basic Republican argument is that in both 1992 and 2008, a Democratic President and Congress was swept into power; in both 1993 and 2009 that Democratic President spent an awful lot of time on health care; we didn't like Clinton; and we don't like Obama. This outline is filled in with references to Democratic extremism, socialism and perhaps most absurdly, the alleged failure of the Obama administration to reach out to Republicans.
The question of whether or not some of the attacks on President Obama are racist is not likely to end anytime soon. There is little that can be done to persuade some supporters of President Obama that comparing the African American president to a witch doctor is not racist, or that the disrespect shown to Obama during his address to congress on health care would not have been on display if the president had been white. Similarly, critics of the president will continue to insist that this is simply all about the issues and that race has nothing to do with it.
If anybody was so hopeful that they believed that the Republican Party leadership did not like the level of nastiness we have seen in recent months, they must now abandon that hope. It is hard to imagine that had a Democratic member of either house of Congress shouted "you lie" at President Bush during an address to congress in 2007-2008 we would have heard silence from Nancy Pelosi or Harry Reid of the kind we have heard from the Republican leadership. Importantly, while it can be argued, although probably wrongly, that the anti-Obama fervor is no worse than the anti-Bush feelings of a few years ago, it cannot be argued that the two parties have engaged in this rhetoric in the same way.
The debate within the Democratic Party over health care reform generally, and the public option specifically, raises several bigger questions about the party. These questions predate the health care debate, but the controversy surrounding the extent of the Democratic Party's commitment to extend health care to as many Americans as possible brings this into sharp focus. If the Democrats do not pass a meaningful health care bill, with a public option it will be hard to answer the question of what the purpose of the Democratic Party is.