Blog Credo

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

H.L. Mencken

Saturday, September 16, 2017

Nancy Smash

Nancy Pelosi is the best Congressional leader of my adult life.  She knows exactly when to push her caucus and when to let them run free.  When she makes a legislative promise, she delivers.  And she brooks no shit.  Part of that comes from having a caucus that actually wants to run and fund the government, but she's also an adept herder of cats.

The "Pelosi is a failure" narrative is largely tied to Democratic reversals in the House from 2010 onward.  The problem is that Democrats lost in 2010 because of the political landscape post-2008 and the usual piss-poor turnout of Democratic constituencies.  This, in turn, led to partisan gerrymandering reinforcing the Big Sort of America into urban and rural camps.

In other words, Pelosi is being blamed for the weather.

Newt Gingrich and Mitch McConnell have, together, more or less destroyed Congress as an institution.  Yet they aren't subject to the sort of harsh treatment in the mainstream press that Pelosi gets.  I would argue that she would have a lot more favorable press if she were named Bill Pelosi.  As Hillary Clinton plugs her new book, it's worth keeping in mind that female politicians are often held to a different standard.  Which is, you know, bullshit.

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