Nancy Pelosi Just Showed Us Why She's the Democratic Leader

[G_j]

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/11/nancy-pelosi-likely-be-house-speaker-again/576478/?fbclid=IwAR297_Tm2j56f1NR5s_Rab-jIR8WK2dgqILl4lICU9XLSi2gx02__8YGeSs

When it comes to dealing with her opponents inside the Capitol’s marble walls, no one in her party even comes close.

By Peter Beinart
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A few years ago, the Brookings Institution scholar Thomas Mann said that during her time running the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi had proved to be the “strongest and most effective speaker of modern times.” To understand why, just look at the way Pelosi has engineered her likely return to the job over the past week.

In August, NBC asked Democrats running for the House whether they supported making Pelosi speaker again. A whopping 58 refused to endorse her. Even more ominous, the abstainers hailed from every wing of the party. They included many of the moderate Democrats with the best chances of winning in Republican-leaning districts: Conor Lamb in Pennsylvania; Mikie Sherrill in New Jersey; Jared Golden in Maine; Gil Cisneros in Orange County, California; and Max Rose in Staten Island, New York. But some of the party’s rising progressive stars—Ayanna Pressley, Rashida Tlaib, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez—snubbed Pelosi, too. It appeared to be one of the few points of consensus among Democrats of all stripes. “There is widespread agreement,” Representative John Yarmuth of Kentucky told Vox in July, “that we need a rejuvenation of leadership.”

What Pelosi realized, however, was that the very breadth of the skepticism toward her afforded her an opportunity. She didn’t have to convince either moderates or progressives that she was their ideal choice. She only had to convince each group of would-be rebels that the other was worse.

The first move in that strategy occurred last Thursday night when Pelosi met with Representative Pramila Jayapal, the incoming co-chair of the House Progressive Caucus. Jayapal had every reason to oppose Pelosi’s return to the speakership. The Seattle congresswoman is working on legislation to abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE); she has already voted to impeach Trump. Pelosi has mocked both causes on the record. “I have those who want to be for impeachment and for abolishing ICE,” she told Robert Draper of The New York Times Magazine this week. “Two really winning issues for us, right? In the districts we have to win? I don’t even think they’re the right thing to do.”

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