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Passion,
Patience, and Pelosi
November 12, 2002
By
Patrick Ennis
 Still
stinging from their humiliating defeat in last week’s mid-term
elections, which appeared to present a golden opportunity
to at least beef up their majority in the Senate, if not take
control of the House too, congressional Democrats are considering
a regime change of their own. Dick Gephardt, a Missouri moderate
who has been House Minority Leader for the last 8 years, announced
that he will resign his leadership position. While aides say
that the move will allow him to devote more time to planning
a presidential bid in 2004, many of his fellow Democrats in
the House see him as part of a party leadership that is to
blame for the party’s poor showing and general loss of initiative.
There are no plans as yet to replace Tom Daschle, now demoted
to Minority Leader status, as leader to the Democrats in the
Senate. He has plenty of vocal critics, even more than before
the election. But nobody else seems to want the job.
But in the house, Minority Whip Nancy Pelosi stands almost
unopposed to replace Gephardt. A San Francisco liberal representative
and former chair of the California Democratic Party, Pelosi
is a sharp contrast to her pragmatic predecessor. Like the
late Senator Paul Wellstone, she is unashamed of the liberal
label. She has been an impassioned champion of women’s rights,
including abortion rights, human rights abroad, and gay rights.
Fellow California Democratic representative Maxine Waters
said of her “The words I use to describe Nancy are the words
I want to use to describe the Democratic Party: ‘Progressive,
strong, energetic’. That is the prospect Nancy offers our
party.” But that’s not to say she will be too obstructionist
to function in a leadership role of a minority party. Fellow
Democratic California legislator Senator Barbara Boxer says
of her longtime friend “I have to laugh when people pigeonhole
her as a liberal. What she really is, is a unifier. She is
going to find issues …. that everyone in the party can rally
around. Her goal has always been consensus, not ideology.”
She certainly is able to excite the base, and if Boxer is
right, it will be a refreshing and much needed change for
a party known for its fractiousness. She initially had competition
from Texas moderate Martin Frost, who said of her “I think
that her politics are to the left, and I think that the party,
to be successful, must speak to the broad center of the country.”
Perhaps Frost, who has since withdrawn his name from consideration
and endorsed Pelosi when it became clear that Pelosi had the
votes to win, is forgetting that Democrats have been trying
to walk the centrist line since 1995, when Bill Clinton, through
his leadership of the DLC, dragged the party kicking and screaming
to the political center, after seeing Republicans take control
of both the House and the Senate. Granted, the newly centrist
Democrats picked up congressional seats in 1998 and 2000 (though
still not enough to regain majority status), but times have
changed since. The peace and prosperity of the 1990’s is gone,
and there is no longer a charismatic Democrat at the bully
pulpit. Perhaps Frost also has failed to notice that as the
Democrats move toward the right, the Republicans have hardly
reciprocated by moving toward common ground. Not unless you
can convince yourself to think of people like Trent Lott and
Tom DeLay, who consider willingness to compromise a weakness,
as moderates. If anything, they have moved further right.
When Democrats reach across the aisle, Republicans put out
a hand, but only after taking a step back, and then another,
and another, still with hand outstretched. (And when Republicans
reach across the aisle, be sure to check the palm for a joy
buzzer.) If this trend continues, we will end up with an ambiguous
“choice”; one between conservatism on the left and fascism
on the right.
Pelosi, technically, does have competition for the leadership
position from 32-year old, 3 term Tennessee congressman Harold
Ford, but it’s futile. Pelosi’s selection is imminent. It
will breathe some passion back into the base, the lack of
which is one of the things that cost the Democrats congressional
seats and a few governorships in last week’s election. The
question is whether it will do so at the cost of moderates,
as Frost and other centrists, and some Republicans, suggest.
That’s why Pelosi’s leadership of the minority party in the
House is a gamble. But then, when you have nothing, you have
nothing to lose. Passionless pragmatism has already been the
strategy of the day, and it clearly isn’t working. The decision
of more than half the Senate Democrats to support President
Bush’s resolution authorizing war against Iraq didn’t stop
them from losing their majority status, although it was considered
politically necessary to prevent just that from happening,
and is remembered by some as a disastrous policy of appeasement,
playing Chamberlain to the president’s Hitler. Perhaps Daschle,
Gephardt, and the rest of the party leadership should have
remembered that the function of an opposition party is to
oppose, not to appease.
So if Pelosi’s ascent to House Minority Leader signals a
return by the Democratic Party to its more liberal roots,
the passion will return to the party’s base. Will that result
in even more congressional losses, as the moderate skeptics
predict? Actually, at first, it might. The election day losses
underline the need for a clear message, one that is easily
distinguished from that of the competition. It can be very
difficult to get that message out when you can’t control any
of the legislative agenda. It can take time -- a lot more
than 2 years. That’s why this enthusiasm may have to be maintained
beyond the 2004 elections, and maybe even beyond 2006. If
the Republicans win even more seats in 2004 and Bush solidly
thumps his challenger -- which is quite possible, given that
the GOP has always had and always will have more money to
spend – there will be a powerful temptation to scrap the game
plan and run back to safety of the center, forgetting in the
panic that this route has already been tried. At the risk
of being labeled a heretic just a plain idiot, I suggest such
a quick reversal, should this scenario come to be, would be
a mistake. Conservatives have spent two decades stigmatizing
the very word “liberal”. It’s quite a tall order to reverse
that in 2 years, or 4, even with a sour economy and a war
without end, especially when in minority status.
Congratulations, Ms. Pelosi, on becoming the first female
party leader, in either chamber, of either party. Democratic
activists, give her your full support. I know you will. But
have patience. It is a sound strategy for the party of the
left to move to the left, but the right has conspired and
will conspire to make that road as difficult as possible.
Victory may take longer than you think. Be prepared for a
long battle.
Patrick Ennis: Articulating the viewpoint of the secular,
liberal, Midwestern working class because, frankly, somebody
has to (and nobody else is).
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