SAN FRANCISCO — To much of the country, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi embodies liberal values and policies. Here in her district, there are plenty of folk who see her as something quite different: the embodiment of establishment power that only pretends to pursue progressive policies while truly pursuing personal power.
It’s a view of Pelosi held by liberal activists across the country who instead identify with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the freshman congresswoman who came to Washington by knocking off Pelosi lieutenant Joe Crowley — who is now at lobbying firm Squire Patton Boggs.
AOC is the Tea Party, and Pelosi is the party establishment.
The feuding has sometimes been quiet, but has recently burst into the open.
The feud between the two sides was clear from Day One. Even before being sworn in, AOC took part in a sit-in protest at Pelosi’s office in November.
Pelosi in February mocked AOC’s Green New Deal, deriding “The green dream or whatever they call it, nobody knows what it is.” She then diminished the importance of AOC and her “squad,” saying “This glass of water would win with a D next to its name in those districts.”
After AOC’s squad undermined Pelosi’s border-funding bill, things got testier, with AOC implying that Pelosi singled out her crew for criticism because they are “women of color.”
If you followed the Tea Party, the whole story looks familiar. The newly elected insurgents and the grassroots activists behind them try to pull the party away from the ideological center. The establishment says we have the same goals as you, but you guys are being very unstrategic with all your ideological purity tests. The grassroots reply bull, you don’t actually have the same goals as us.
“We know she doesn’t have the same goals as us,” Ben Becker, an officer at San Francisco Berniecrats tells me. “Pelosi isn’t doing this because she has some vision where she wants to change the world.” Why has she toiled so long in the political trenches? “She wants power.”
Pelosi wields that power to advance progressive policies and election outcomes, her defenders argue. “I want someone who can effectively move forward an agenda in Congress,” liberal local politician David Campos told Mission Local, a San Francisco media outlet. “I am unapologetic about my progressive views, but I am also unapologetic about my support for Nancy Pelosi.” Campos now heads the San Francisco County Democratic Party.
“We need both of them,” said San Francisco Democratic operative Susan Brown. “I love ‘the squad,’ but I wouldn’t want them in charge.” She added, “nobody raises money like Nancy Pelosi.”
Grassroots liberals reject the idea that the insurgent members can simply be complements to Pelosi, as long as they follow Pelosi’s orders and keep their complaints out of the public eye. “You keep it in the family,” Becker says, “and you don’t do anything. It’s only when you go public,” that you get real change, he argues.
The Tea Party experience bears this out. Rowdy conservative senators like Ted Cruz and Jim DeMint were able to get some wins such as securing spending cuts and blocking gun control. This was accomplished not by working behind the scenes with party leader Mitch McConnell, but by taking their fight publicly to the grassroots, and having those masses apply pressure to other Republicans.
Crucially, this isn’t just AOC vs. Pelosi. It’s a clash of two different squads.
These days every political junkie knows about AOC, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, and Ayanna Pressley, but Pelosi is part of a baby boomer San Francisco political squad that has held power for decades. Pelosi, Dianne Feinstein, Barbara Boxer, Jerry Brown, and Willie Brown have dominated state politics, and they are part of a platoon — spanning three generations, and bound by blood and marriage — that includes three mayors of San Francicso (Feinstein, Willie Brown, and Pelosi’s kind-of-nephew Gavin Newsom), a mayor of Oakland (Jerry Brown) three governors of California (Jerry Brown twice, his father Pat Brown, and now Newsom), a combined 61 years in the U.S. Senate (Feinstein and Boxer), a speaker of the state assembly (Willie Brown) and the U.S. House (Pelosi), and plenty more.
Gavin Newsom’s rise represents this San Fran squad maintaining its grip across generations, as does the election of Kamala Harris to replace Boxer (Harris is a protégé of Willie Brown).
“There’s a kind of a royal family in California right now,” Becker says.
For Pelosi, Becker says, “folks like AOC are a real threat. Beyond wanting to go after some policies they don’t want to go after,” they undermine the tight-knit power base that Pelosi and friends have been consolidating for decades.
The grassroots Left knows what the Tea Party knew: You can’t win this fight in Washington, you have to take it home. In the case of Pelosi, that means a primary challenge right here in San Francisco.
Attorney Shahid Buttar was one of many challengers to Pelosi in 2018, who combined for 31.5% in the multi-party primary, and he’s running again. He would have to dramatically improve his fundraising and name identification to even make a dent in Pelosi in 2020. Becker thinks it’s possible, because Buttar has gotten in earlier than 2018 and because the 2018 primary wins by progressive insurgents have convinced the grassroots that anything is possible.
“I think AOC has really changed things,” Becker says.
No doubt. And Pelosi doesn’t like it.
