One week after Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi led a stinging revolt against President Obama’s trade agenda, the president and the top Democrat in the House put that very high-profile clash aside and appeared at a multi-million dollar Democratic fundraiser as nothing less than each other’s top fans.
Last week’s trade disaster for Obama, led by Pelosi, led to a chill in which the White House repeatedly declined to say whether the two were talking. But Friday night, they appeared together at a party benefiting the re-election hopes of Democratic Congressional candidates at the home of billionaire climate activist Tom Steyer overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge.
The high-dollar fundraiser — tickets cost between $10,000 to $33,000 a head — was undoubtedly planned long before Pelosi led the rebellion against Obama’s long-sought after “Fast Track” trade authority.
If there were lingering tensions between the two, both pols were adept at hiding them. Neither mentioned the word “trade” and the president only briefly referred to their differences.
Clad in a blue suit and gold heels, Pelosi took the microphone and immediately starting praising Obama for the economic recovery.
Many months of “positive job growth,” she said to loud cheers and applause. “Seventeen million Americans previously underinsured … now insured,” she said in an obvious reference to the president’s work in pushing the Affordable Care Act through Congress.
She also thanked Obama for emission standards and his flurry of executive actions on key agenda items, which she referred to as “executive opportunities.”
“These are remarkable changes the president has done by executive action,” she said.
On the climate-change agreement Obama has worked out with China, Pelosi solemnly thanked him. “Thank you, Mr. President,” she said.
Steyer spoke next, also praising Obama’s deal with China and other efforts to fight climate change.
“He has done it his own way under the most difficult political circumstances I’ve ever witnessed,” Steyer said, quickly adding that the financial crisis in 2008 might have been the most difficult circumstances since the 1860s.
The president then gave Steyer a quick hug before heaping praise on Pelosi, saying he couldn’t have achieved anything in Congress without one important partner in the House.
“Nancy Pelosi has been that partner,” she said.
He then turned to the murder of nine black church parishioners in Charleston, S.C., by Dylann Roof and recalled the remarks the family members of victims delivered to Roof on Friday. They somehow managed “to find the strength to say ‘we forgive you,'” he said.
“This stuff happens way too often,” he said. “We’ve got to change that. It’s not enough for us to express sympathy. We have to take action.”
He ended with a pitch for the DCCC, which collected as much as $1.65 million in that single event.
“It’s not like I agree with my Democratic caucus on everything,” he said, pausing for laughter and then turning to grin a Pelosi, who smiled and blushed. “But on 98 percent of things, they’re moving in the right direction,” he concluded.
