Every time House Speaker Nancy Pelosi pushes her party’s radical progressive caucus toward compromise, it appears they push right back — and hard.
Last night, Pelosi sent a letter to her Democratic colleagues, writing that the feedback she has received from members is “to do fewer things well so that we can still have a transformative impact on families in the workplace and responsibly address the climate crisis.”
This sounds like Pelosi would like to move in a direction closer to what Sen. Joe Manchin has articulated, which would be for Democrats to choose just one or two priorities and then fully fund them — as opposed to stuffing everything in a smaller package but only fund them for a few years.
But then, at a press conference Tuesday, Pelosi flip-flopped and sounded like she was siding with the progressives again.
“I mean, we’re still talking about a couple trillion dollars. But it’s much less” than the $3.5 trillion we wanted, she told reporters. “So mostly, we would be cutting back on years and something like that.”
Clearly, her letter from last night did not go over well with the progressive caucus.
Pelosi maintains she wants to vote on a final spending package before Halloween, but it is increasingly clear that won’t happen. It appears House Democrats are still negotiating with themselves when they really need to negotiate with Manchin.
Maybe all that negotiating is going on right now behind the scenes. But if Pelosi’s latest flip-flop is any indication, those negotiations aren’t going well.
