House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has a fair, stern warning for the Democratic candidates vying for the presidency: “Remember November. You must win the Electoral College.”
To Pelosi, the 2020 election isn’t a sprint, it’s a marathon. And that means Democrats need to think long term, especially when it comes to their party platform.
“What works in San Francisco does not necessarily work in Michigan,” Pelosi told Bloomberg, adding that “what works in Michigan” does in fact “work in San Francisco,” especially when it comes to “workers’ rights and sharing prosperity.”
Other policies, however, such as Medicare for All and the Green New Deal, tend to isolate the voters Democrats need to win over in the general election.
“As a left-wing San Francisco liberal I can say to these people: What are you thinking?” Pelosi said. “You can ask the left — they’re unhappy with me for not being a socialist.”
Pelosi seems to understand what Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren doesn’t: The Democratic base to which she is currently appealing for support is not representative of the rest of the country, and neither is President Trump’s base, for that matter. Warren’s plan-for-everything agenda might be enough to secure the Democratic nomination, but it won’t help her win the general election. In fact, Warren would lose to Trump in five of the six key swing states, a recent New York Times poll suggests.
Change, then, must be gradual. On healthcare, Pelosi suggests stepping away from Medicare for All and all of “its complications” and instead returning to the Affordable Care Act, which provides a “path to healthcare for all Americans.”
Pelosi is a pragmatist and on this she’s right. Instead of focusing on the race against Trump, Warren, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, and the other liberals are focusing on their inner race against each other to see who can get the furthest to the Left without dropping out. This isn’t a winning strategy. Pelosi knows this, and more importantly, the voters do, too.
