Pelosi's first job: Rally liberals - POLITICO.com Print View

Pelosi's first job: Rally liberals By: Jonathan Allen November 15, 2010 04:34 AM EST

If Nancy Pelosi’s tone doesn’t sound calibrated to soothe the ears of independents who fled Democrats in the midterm elections, that’s because it’s not really tuned for them.  Instead, the first order of business for the sequence-oriented Pelosi is solidifying liberal base constituencies, both outside Congress and within her Democratic Caucus. It’s their support she needs to remain the leader of a smaller, more liberal House Democratic contingent after a historic loss for Democrats on Nov. 2.  If there is to be attention to the center — to the voters Democrats alienated and to the lawmakers who are vowing to vote against her for minority leader — it will come later.  Pelosi has telegraphed the strategy clearly and consistently over the past two weeks. In separate interviews with ABC News and NPR, the outgoing House speaker said she has “no regrets” about an agenda that proved unpopular with voters and that “we didn’t lose the election because of me.” Her aides pointed reporters to laudatory op-eds written by liberal opinion makers, an endorsement from the environmentalist Sierra Club and a letter from 32 House Democratic women backing her candidacy for minority leader in the new GOP-controlled House.  As she enters a chaotic week of lame-duck legislating, the ethics trial of Rep. Charles Rangel(D-N.Y.), freshman orientation and the first contentious leadership election in her eight years as the chief Democrat in the House, Pelosi’s public posture is that of a fighter and a champion for progressive causes who can rally her party back to power.  “We have to be proud of our record,” a Pelosi aide told POLITICO. “There’s been a lot of things that any objective observer would say were impressive. Clearly, there were not enough jobs created.”  Pelosi and her allies blame the midterm results on high unemployment and a White House communications team that House Democrats say failed to articulate the strengths of the party’s agenda to the public.  Pelosi’s ability to sell her narrative will determine not only whether she can turn back a third-and-very-long challenge from Blue Dog Democrat Heath Shuler of North Carolina for the post of minority leader but also whether a new coalition of critics will be able to strip her of the power to unilaterally appoint allies to influential positions within the party’s leadership structure.  Pelosi has moved adroitly to tamp down brushfires that threatened to inflame restiveness into outright revolt: She announced her desire to create a new post to ensure that House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, the only African-American party leader in Congress, wouldn’t lose his rank. Behind the scenes, her inner circle has pressured rank-and-file lawmakers into showing their loyalty by promising votes and signing letters of support for her.   South Carolina’s Clyburn and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland, who had been set to run against each other for the No. 2 job of minority whip, have both endorsed the creation of the new No. 3 post for Clyburn.  Congressional Black Caucus Chairwoman Barbara Lee of California, a fellow Bay Area lawmaker who is among Pelosi’s staunchest supporters, cautioned Saturday that the Clyburn solution still must be vetted by the CBC at its meeting Monday. But Pelosi’s maneuver most likely means that the black caucus won’t join as a bloc with scattered moderates and liberals who have called on her to step aside or to, at least, postpone the leadership election.  Now, even critics acknowledge she is positioned to keep her job — or at least the minority-side version of it.  One senior Democratic lawmaker told POLITICO the question of whether she is the right person to lead the party is irrelevant because “she has the votes.”  The Disloyal Opposition  While Pelosi rallies the liberal base, dozens of Democrats have made clear that they are not content with her decision to remain in leadership.  For moderate Blue Dogs, the frustration is taking the form of Shuler’s leadership run and an effort to rewrite caucus rules to give the rank and file greater say in who runs the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the Steering and Policy Committee, which hands out committee assignments.  On the left, Reps. Marcy Kaptur of Ohio and Peter DeFazio of Oregon have called on Pelosi to postpone this week’s leadership election until December — a move that could give an anti-Pelosi movement time to build.  A quieter and perhaps more strategic set of younger lawmakers are fomenting dissent by arguing that the party needs to respond to its loss of at least 60 seats and control of the House by changing something — or at least someone — in the leadership.  “You have a bunch of senior citizens at the buffet at closing time, fighting over the last piece of meat,” said one veteran House Democrat, who also noted the “frustration of the younger generation.”  Even a handful of longtime Pelosi allies — including Democratic Reps. Michael Capuano of Massachusetts and Tim Ryan of Ohio — have spoken against her in interviews with local papers.  The sum of the discontented parts won’t be clear until lawmakers have a chance to talk to one another this week on the House floor and in a series of meetings of various factions and ad hoc groups.  Shuler says he knows he can’t beat Pelosi.  “I can add and subtract,” the former Washington Redskins quarterback said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday.   But his candidacy promises to reveal how many Democrats are in the no-under-any-circumstances column when it comes to keeping Pelosi in power within the caucus.  If she wins, Pelosi still faces the possible embarrassment of losing more votes for speaker on the House floor in January than any other candidate for the post in recent memory. The modern mark: Nine Republicans didn’t vote for Speaker Newt Gingrich after the 1996 election.  But the growing movement to loosen Pelosi’s grip on the Democratic Caucus by knocking her allies out of appointed leadership posts may have a greater practical consequence.  For example, Reps. George Miller (D-Calif.) and Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) have run the Steering and Policy Committee since 2003, despite a two-term limit in House rules.  Pelosi has not indicated whether she might be open to altering caucus rules.  Will She Pivot?  At times, Pelosi’s pitch — a double-down-with-me approach — seems out of touch with the results of an election in which her party got crushed and public opinion polls showed her approval rating among independents in the single digits.  Though it was certainly a combination of both factors, many Democrats attribute their loss not to the flight of independents but to the apathy of base Democrats disappointed by the pace of change in the wake of President Barack Obama’s election.  “A lot of the Democrats who didn’t vote with her or vote with Barack Obama got defeated,” former Rep. Marty Russo (D-Ill.) told POLITICO. “It wasn’t really a referendum on Nancy Pelosi.”  There’s little indication right now that Pelosi plans to pivot to try to recapture the center.  In a piece written for the liberal magazine The Nation — and posted on Pelosi’s website — Katrina vanden Heuvel writes, “Let the Blue Dogs whimper all they want to, their caucus will be dwarfed by the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) in the next Congress. The CPC with Leader Pelosi have the potential to draw sharp lines of contrast with the GOP, expose conservative catering to corporate interests and pursue an inside-outside strategy with progressive groups to help define the direction for this next rough period.”  But Pelosi seldom gets ahead of herself, tackling each challenge in order.  The first is to win reelection in a liberal caucus.  “She’s proud of the legislation that we passed, but certainly there’s a regret that we lost the election,” the Pelosi aide said.

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