- Joined
- May 25, 2018
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There is no question in my mind that we will take the house with about a 10-15 vote margin and most of those gains will be in purple or red hued states, and I suspect the Senate will stay in republican hands with even a vote or two to spare of republican votes to spare. The real question is what do we do with the House besides stop Republican initiatives?
The first question is whether Pelosi gets the gavel back and it is to be a very complicated question indeed. Several of the moderate or red hued Dems may have to commit not to vote for Pelosi , when in fact that she is the absolute best option to kill future impeachment hearings. Pelosi was adamant against impeachment hearings on Bush and she is against impeachment hearings of Trump. Meanwhile the progressives will demand Pelosi support such hearings to win their votes because that is what they will have promised the base.
Pelosi will try to walk a fine line re-openning the investigations into Russian hacking and meddling and possible Trump connections but discourage any talk that those hearings should lead to articles of impeachment ( exactly what I support myself by the way) while she plots to pack the Judiciary committee with Dems who are likewise skeptical of impeachment.
I think there will also be an 'anybody but Pelosi' movement based on the idea that Republicans have turned her into such toxic presence that she is dead weight. There is another complication. An awful lot of the winning candidates in these primaries have been WOMEN, who are sensitive to this notion that there is much harsher standard applied to Democratic women politicians in national media than men and Hillary Clinton is exhibit A of gender bias that Dems were too silent about. They and the Womens political action groups will be watching very carefully to see how Pelosi is treated. It would be a very rare act to push the very woman out of speakership that largely maneuvered the party into a position to best take back the reins. Normally the party rewards the leadership team that saw those gains, not ditch them to the curb.
Personally, I don't know that there is anyone better capable of sheparding the kind of legislation most likely to force difficult choices on to the GOP and Trump while avoiding the cocky misteps of newfound power.[This is the actual answer to the title question] Nancy well remembers the Henry Hyde impeachment debacle that lost the GOP its majority. That woman is not stupid, she understands the legislative process and she can count votes. I am not sure she can survive this pincher movement.
The first question is whether Pelosi gets the gavel back and it is to be a very complicated question indeed. Several of the moderate or red hued Dems may have to commit not to vote for Pelosi , when in fact that she is the absolute best option to kill future impeachment hearings. Pelosi was adamant against impeachment hearings on Bush and she is against impeachment hearings of Trump. Meanwhile the progressives will demand Pelosi support such hearings to win their votes because that is what they will have promised the base.
Pelosi will try to walk a fine line re-openning the investigations into Russian hacking and meddling and possible Trump connections but discourage any talk that those hearings should lead to articles of impeachment ( exactly what I support myself by the way) while she plots to pack the Judiciary committee with Dems who are likewise skeptical of impeachment.
I think there will also be an 'anybody but Pelosi' movement based on the idea that Republicans have turned her into such toxic presence that she is dead weight. There is another complication. An awful lot of the winning candidates in these primaries have been WOMEN, who are sensitive to this notion that there is much harsher standard applied to Democratic women politicians in national media than men and Hillary Clinton is exhibit A of gender bias that Dems were too silent about. They and the Womens political action groups will be watching very carefully to see how Pelosi is treated. It would be a very rare act to push the very woman out of speakership that largely maneuvered the party into a position to best take back the reins. Normally the party rewards the leadership team that saw those gains, not ditch them to the curb.
Personally, I don't know that there is anyone better capable of sheparding the kind of legislation most likely to force difficult choices on to the GOP and Trump while avoiding the cocky misteps of newfound power.[This is the actual answer to the title question] Nancy well remembers the Henry Hyde impeachment debacle that lost the GOP its majority. That woman is not stupid, she understands the legislative process and she can count votes. I am not sure she can survive this pincher movement.
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