If you stay long enough in Washington, you become a symbol, a totem.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has been in Congress since Ronald Reagan’s presidency, under the speakership of Jim Wright. She, too, has become a totem, and Republicans have become masters at tapping public animosity toward her.
Republicans won the special election in Georgia’s 6th Congressional District in large part by tying Democrat Jon Ossoff to Pelosi. One GOP ad featured old hippies and ponytailed guys in Pelosi’s San Francisco district wearing Pelosi/Ossoff garb and getting excited about getting another representative in the House.
Democrats and Republicans alike believe that Ossoff’s greatest weakness was simply that, as a Democrat, he would become a foot soldier in Pelosi’s army if elected. And this isn’t a new thing. In both midterm elections since Pelosi first became speaker (2010 and 2014), Republicans ran as much against Pelosi as against former President Barack Obama or Obamacare. And both times they made massive gains. When Obama and Hillary Clinton were not on the ballot, Republicans made the elections about Pelosi, and it worked.
The result is that Democrats have become a minority party and a regional party. Only one white Democrat from the South remains in either chamber of Congress. In 2009, Democrats held a majority of Congressional seats in Ohio —10 of 18. Now they’re down to four of 16. In Iowa, Democrats have gone from 60 percent of the House seats after the 2006 election to 25 percent today.
Pelosi has, at times, seemed fine with this. When Ohio Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan, one of a handful of Democrats to represent congressional districts Donald Trump won, challenged her for minority leader last year, she laughed him off, saying, “He didn’t even carry his own district for Hillary.” In other words, her party is not a party for flyover country.
It’s ironic, in a way, that Pelosi has presided over a shrinking and increasingly parochial party. During the Bush years, Pelosi was actually quite sensible in trying to make the Democrats a big-tent party. This bore fruit with a Democratic takeover of Congress in 2006 and a bigger majority in 2008.
And any conservative should admire her willingness to fight for her principles. She passed a very unpopular bailout of Wall Street in 2008. When Obama took office, she pushed through a massive stimulus, a climate change bill, Obamacare, and the Dodd-Frank financial regulation bill. She knew most of these bills would be hated and could cost her members their seats. Her members knew this too, but she got them to walk the plank. Rather than save the majority at all costs, she spent the majority on crucial party priorities.
Pelosi’s persistence has been praiseworthy. Her tactics have not been so. For instance, many of the wavering House Democrats she persuaded to support Obamacare coincidentally got lobbying jobs for the industries that supported and benefited from Obamacare.
To pass Waxman-Markey through the House, Pelosi sold out the bill’s purported aims of helping the planet in order to win industry support. She inserted a rider protecting ethanol-driven deforestation from Environmental Protection Agency scrutiny. She also inserted special carbon credits for the agrichemical industry, specifically benefiting Monsanto, where her former aide was a lobbyist.
While at times she tossed aside her ethically troubled members — see Anthony Weiner and Eric Massa — she has gone to great lengths to protect more powerful colleagues from ethical scrutiny: See Charlie Rangel and Maxine Waters.
While eschewing a left populism for a big-government corporatism, Pelosi didn’t moderate a bit on social issues. The Catholic lawmaker, who once declared “I do my religion on Sundays, in church,” has presided over a caucus that became ever more dogmatic in defense of abortion and gay marriage. Questioning either of these rites is anathema.
So it’s no surprise that Pelosi works as such a good foil in Trump Country. Perhaps it is more surprising that she should serve as a bogeyman in the highly educated, socially moderate, wealthy 6th District of Georgia.
Perhaps some of her un-appeal is superficial. Is it the San Francisco thing? Her perpetually shocked face? The Italian last name? The fact that she’s been in Congress for 30 years and in party leadership for half that time?
Whatever the cause, Nancy Pelosi, an effective speaker for Democrats, has become an invaluable symbol for Republicans.
