Nancy Pelosi has announced that she is running for House minority leader, citing the need to defend health care and Wall Street reforms and Social Security and Medicare. And my friend Donnie Fowler, a top national Democratic Party consultant, thinks that’s a very good thing, even if I have a few doubts.
“She is a fighter and can bring the majority back in 2012 and no one more progressive would beat her,” Fowler said as he shared the news of Pelosi’s announcement, responding to my skeptical initial reaction. He said that having Pelosi remain in a leadership position was the best hope for pushing San Francisco values in a tumultuous country that has moved the House far to the right.
The Bay Guardian and other leading San Francisco progressive voices have criticized Pelosi for allowing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to drag on, for not taking stronger stands on gay rights (from same-sex marriage to the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy), and for pushing flawed reforms of Wall Street and the health care system that left big corporations with too much power.
Fowler said Pelosi is “better in term of ideology and she’s a strong fighter,” but he conceded that she’s also a pragmatist, so she’ll often fight for outcomes that are not nearly as progressive as she would prefer, as she’s done recently. “She fights hard for what she can get today,” said Fowler, who has played leading roles in Democratic presidential and other campaigns and came in second in the race to chair the national party a few years ago. “Over the last two years, she has felt throttled by other parts of the Democratic Party and other leaders in Washington.”
But many of the moderate to conservative Democrats who have made Pelosi’s life so difficult were voted out of office on Tuesday, leaving a far more liberal caucus. “The biggest hit was to moderates and Blue Dogs, just because of where they live,” Fowler said, citing people such as Rep. Chet Edwards, who represented George W. Bush’s Crawford, Texas district, which now went Republican. “The caucus is going to be more liberal.”
Does that mean that Pelosi could sound a more full-throated defense of progressive values as minority leader? Yes, Fowler said, she could and should, but he’s still not sure whether she will. “The Democrats have got to say what they believe, they have to stand up for progressive values, and they have to be unashamed about it,” he said, noting that the centrist waffling was a factor in the party’s defeat this week, moreso than a genuine desire of the electorate to bring back the Republicans. “If you won’t stand up for yourself, people won’t believe that you’ll stand up for them.”
Right now, moderate Democrats are already starting to make the case that the party needs to be more economically conservative. Rep. Heath Shuler, a Blue Dog Democrat from North Carolina, has announced his intention to run for minority leader on a pro-business platform. It’s also possible progressives could mount a challenge from Pelosi’s left, such as Reps. Barbara Lee (who was the only vote against invading Afghanistan in 2001), Dennis Kucinich, or Raul Grijalva (the Arizona Democrat who co-chairs the Progressive Caucus with Rep. Lynn Woolsey).
Yet Fowler continues to believe that Pelosi is the best person to lead the party back through what’s expected to be a difficult couple years. But does it play into Republican hands to stick with their greatest foil, someone whose liberal politics and connection to a famously liberal city made her the focus in GOP attack ads?
Fowler dismissed that notion, saying that Republicans are going to demonize whoever leads the party. He said the Democrats could elect the most conservative good ole boy with a thick Southern accent “and they’ll still call him a liberal socialist.”
So then why not nominate an actual liberal socialist, someone who can bring a stronger critique of this country’s economic and political systems and set the country up for a more fundamental shift in 2012, someone like Lee, Kucinich, Grijalva, or Woolsey? To Fowler, that’s a bridge too far. Even with a more progressive caucus, he doesn’t think they could win, and he doesn’t think the party ought to move that far to the left anyway.
But what do you think, Guardian readers? Is this a time for Democrats to stay the course, or is this perhaps a moment for progressives to step up – unafraid of the Tea Party rhetoric – and start pushing everyone from President Obama on down to finally address inherent flaws in this country’s unsustainable economic and political systems?