As the race for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination intensifies, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is trying to keep the peace.
Bernie Sanders’s recent gains have left establishment Democrats, Pelosi included, nervous. But when asked if she’d be comfortable with Sanders leading the Democratic ticket, Pelosi gave a one-word answer: “Yes.”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has offered a similar response, arguing that any one of the Democratic candidates would help the party achieve its primary goal of beating President Trump.
But the Democratic Party is not as happy a family right now as such talk might suggest.
From 2006 to 2018, House and Senate Democrats had a formula for electoral success. Both Pelosi and Schumer were personally involved in making it happen. When they won — and they can be said to have “won” four of the last seven elections — Democrats did it by fielding appropriate candidates for states and districts that were out of the reach of more typical leftist Democrats.
This meant running many centrists who broke from party orthodoxy on one issue or another. It meant campaigning on popular and unifying issues, such as a ban on insurer discrimination against those with preexisting conditions. And finally, it meant not squeezing the party’s candidates by nationalizing their elections around polarizing and extremist ideas. To give the obvious example, neither Schumer nor Pelosi would have ever wanted their party to rally around divisive ideological labels such as “socialist.”
After her stunning victory in 2018, Pelosi seemed to be keeping her party on the right path, avoiding capitulation to the far Left. She resisted an ill-founded impeachment effort as long as she felt she could. She fought against attempts by the far-left “Squad” to usurp her speakership, even disparaging their “Green Dream, or whatever they call it.” As Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez came to define the new class of Democrats, Pelosi repeatedly sought to downplay the freshman’s influence, explaining that the 2018 campaign was won by dozens of more moderate Democrats running in swing districts on a more incremental approach to policy.
“All these people have their public whatever and their Twitter world,” she told the New York Times last July. “But they didn’t have any following. They’re four people and that’s how many votes they got.” An irate Ocasio-Cortez would subsequently accuse the first female speaker of the House of being both racist and sexist.
But now, Ocasio-Cortez may be having the last laugh. Not only has Sanders emerged as the front-runner for the Democratic nomination, but the young Bronx socialist can claim part of the credit. Last October, when many were writing off Sanders in the wake of his heart attack, she endorsed him along with squadmates Reps. Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib. That was one factor that helped revive Sanders and added fuel to his comeback.
Now, Pelosi faces the nomination of Sanders, an out-and-proud socialist who can hardly back away today from his repeated praise for Fidel Castro and other communist dictators. If she disowns him, she’ll fuel progressive angst over another establishment coup against Sanders that will “rob” him of the nomination. This would only encourage further bad behavior by the party’s far-left members in Congress and a potential sit-out of the election by its most committed voters and activists on the Left.
But if Pelosi simply capitulates and accepts her party’s new socialist overlords, the consequences for the entire party, up and down the ballot, could be catastrophic. In 2018, Pelosi placed an emphasis on popular issues such as protecting people with preexisting conditions — and portrayed Republicans as the ones who wanted to disrupt people’s healthcare. This played a central role in the Democrats’ ability to win over suburbs in the decisive districts. What happens to the party when its standard-bearer’s goal is to take away the current health insurance of these same suburban voters and otherwise devour their wealth with confiscatory tax rates, so as to create new utopian schemes? Democrats could lose their House majority, which they won back in 2018 thanks in part to older, educated, well-off voters who tend to be more moderate than Pelosi herself — let alone the socialist wing of the party.
This isn’t just about 2020 either. It’s an ideological battle for the future of the Democratic Party. If Pelosi remains silent and Sanders wins the nomination, she will have lost that battle to Ocasio-Cortez and the other radicals.
As little as the Democratic Party’s left wing wants to admit it, the party needs moderate voters to maintain and build its House majority, retake the Senate, and win the White House. Sanders thus poses a problem to which there is no easy solution. Whether Pelosi embraces him as the nominee or works against him, she will face negative political ramifications, just when her party needs most to stay united.
