observations

an updated essay on where the Democratic Party is, and how we got here.

Michelle Obama hates politics. Despite that she gave a live televized convention speech so impressive that it will be remembered for years.

Nancy Pelosi spoke at that same convention. Remember her speech? Exactly. Nobody does. Pelosi is a terrible public speaker. It’s a huge handicap when you’re trying to communicate with voters. For a politician it’s like being a one-legged quarterback.

Can we really wonder that our Democratic Party hasn’t won any superbowls in a long time? With our QB hopping around on one leg trying to complete passes?

How on earth did we get here?

Well, Nancy became House Minority Leader in 2003. This was late Dubya administration, so winning a majority was mostly a matter of standing around watching inept Republicans lose. The WMD lies came home to roost, W had gotten us into two quagmires, and totally botched the response to Hurricane Katrina. In addition 2006 was the sixth year of the administration, which is always tough on the president’s party. It’s like when a team from San Diego has to play in a snowstorm in Minnesota.

So with everything in her favor she cruised to an easy victory in 2006 and became Speaker of the House. Then we had a global economic meltdown, which was rightfully blamed on Dubya. The country was very much in the mood for hope and change and an extremely talented public speaker was running for POTUS, so Nancy just rode his coattails and kept a nice majority in the House.

The year 2009 was all about crafting a health care bill. They succeeded. It became law. It was even a decent bill. Trouble was Pelosi had zero communication skills. She couldn’t sell it. Her breathtaking incompetence at messaging allowed the Cons to convince the American people that Obamacare was a socialist hell the Dems had foisted on them. It wasn’t true, but Nancy’s utter inability to articulate a positive narrative about her historic new law meant that her big legislative win became her huge political fail.

Probably the most famous Pelosi quote ever is “We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it”. It was the dumbest possible thing for her to say at that moment. Given her chance to shine as a transformative leader of our nation, she spoke like a bumbling idiot.

Is it any surprise that she got crushed in the following elections? and wow did she get crushed. It was the worst loss of House seats in 100 years. Historically Bad. In football she’s the coach who just ended the season with 0 wins 16 loses. She should have resigned in disgrace on the spot. Any decent human would have, but Nancy’s built different. She’s not like that. What’s her history? Where did she come from?

She was raised in Baltimore by the boss of the local political machine. Surrounded by it throughout her childhood, Pelosi learned the mechanics of carrot and stick, favors and threats, subtle bribery and subtle blackmail. All the ways to get information and keep track of who hates who, and who owes who a favor. The ins and outs of co-opting and coercing everybody who’s anybody, and applying that knowledge to always maintain a rock solid grip on power. Those are the skills that made her caucus leader in the first place, and she had no intention of loosening her iron grip on the caucus regardless of how catastrophic it was for her electoral results or for the country as a whole.

Pelosi’s loss of 63 House seats crippled the Obama presidency. The following 6 years were spent fighting combative Cons about idiotic crap like the sequester. Nothing positive got done, and by 2016 the Dems had no positive results to boast about at all.

Hillary’s message of “Hey, vote for us, we got nothing done for 6 years because of Republican obstruction, but we’ll be better in the future for sure” didn’t inspire a whole lot of voters.

Nancy herself continued to have zero communication skills. She learned nothing, and she refused to hire competent people to do it for her. She never once, even for half a day, seized the narrative, and reached the voters with a positive message about Dems. Despite her solid A+ for ruling her caucus with an iron fist, she was an F- on messaging. She was worse than useless at persuading voters that the Democratic Party had something worthwhile to offer.

When Obama left office, Pelosi became de facto leader of the party. How hard can it be, tho’? Her opponent was an openly corrupt idiot who knew nothing about any issue, and constantly lied about everything. He contradicted himself. He yapped gibberish. It was an obvious easy win. but somehow Nancy never threw a punch. She never tried. She made no effort to tell the American people that the criminal at the head of the Executive Branch is a criminal. It probably didn’t matter. Nancy is so bad at communicating with the public that any effort on her part would have backfired anyway. The only real solution, the only effective thing to do to protect the interests of the American people, was for her to resign and leave politics forever. but Pelosi wasn’t raised that way. Deep in her soul she knew she must seize power and hold on to power.

So an Orange Fascist ran amok, unchallenged for 2 years. Being a moron, he of course, screwed up a lot, and actually lost his House majority in the mid-terms. In football this is when a horrible team named Democrats with a 2 and 12 record accidentally wins a game because their opponent fumbles 10 times. Donald was constantly fumbling.

All through 2017 and 2018 the almost endless list of conflicts of interest, the scandals and crimes, the incompetence and corruption of the Trump administration just kept piling up. The Cons in the House had no interest in crossing Trump. They had no intention of investigating Executive Branch misconduct at all. So when the speakership landed in Nancy’s lap there was a massive backlog of oversight work to be done. Dozens of well-documented impeachable offenses were already common knowledge. So expectations were high.

and Pelosi did nothing. Literally nothing. It was business as usual. She completely ignored her Constitutional duty. She overlooked any and all crime being committed by the Orange Fascist and his henchmen. She went on drafting legislation (apparently she loves drafting legislation) as if nothing was wrong, and sent all her newly passed bills to Mitch McConnell who tossed them in the dumpster behind the Senate office building.

Our system of government is based on checks and balances. Executive Branch crime must be reigned in by the Legislative Branch. This is a simple civics lesson. Any normal human in Nancy’s place would have worked overtime, canceled everybody’s vacations, and had them all working 60-hour weeks to make sure the miscreants are publicly shamed before Congressional Committees and properly punished. A long series of televized hearings showing just how vile the lying criminals surrounding Trump are, would have guaranteed a huge boost in the polls for the Democrats.

but it never happened.

The House of Representatives has a 3-day work week. Almost all of them go home every weekend, and lots of them have long distances to travel. So Fridays and Mondays are set aside for travel, and they actually work Tuesday through Thursday. Yes, a 4-day weekend every week. In addition the House of Representatives doesn’t have vacations. They have recess. Normally 12 weeks of recess per year. Nancy didn’t cut down on recess at all. Her House worked as little or less than normal, despite the historically enormous oversight workload that they had.

Pelosi herself went to France to celebrate the anniversary of D-Day. She took a tour of Africa with Ilhan Omar. She went to Guatemala and Mexico. She spent a few weeks in Napa Valley sipping wine. She went to a cocktail party at Maureen Dowd’s luxury apartment. I suppose she needed a rest after producing so much paper for McConnell to dump in the trash.

What?!?! Wasn’t there pressure on Pelosi to, you know, actually do something?!?! Yes, there was. In response galaxy brains calmly explained that Nancy was playing 26 dimensional chess and her inaction was really a ploy to lure her victim into a perfect trap. Or they expounded on the importance of “keeping her powder dry”. To this day no one can explain how that metaphor makes any sense, but as an excuse for complete lethargy it sufficed at the time. Then when the Mueller Report came out, people thought the House should act. Nancy didn’t want to, but the pressure was high enough to make her concede “Okay, maybe a committee could ask Mueller to come testify in a few months”. It was classic politician kicking an unpleasant can down the road.

Nothing much was really new in the Mueller Report, but since it was published it was impossible to stall by saying “We gotta wait for Mueller”, so House members actually started to call for impeachment. Nancy quietly shut them down. but the crime went on, and Dems started to look like complete morons, because how could they criticize Trump for doing all these crimes while simultaneously refusing to impeach him for all these crimes that were well-documented and public knowledge?

During the 2019 summer recess Democratic House Members went home to their districts and every time they held a town hall meeting, angry constituents screamed at them “Why the hell are you letting that Orange criminal get away with it?!?!”. The embarrassment was intense.

Coming back from recess in September they forced Pelosi to compromise and allow them to at least pretend to do oversight. Luckily at that moment some whistle-blower came forward with evidence of some misdeed involving Ukraine. It was a tiny fraction of a percent of the corruption that needed to be prosecuted, but it was a bone Nancy could throw to the angry fools who actually believed in the rule of law.

Incidentally the Chairman of the House Oversight Committee died that autumn. He had been terminally ill for months. So, yeah, maybe not laser focused on investigating the most corrupt administration in American history.

During the Obama years congressional Rs shouted “Scandal! Scandal! Scandal!” and convinced millions of Americans that Hillary is a murderer, and the proof of that was somehow that she used email, or deleted email or something (none of it made any sense). Despite the fact that there was absolutely no wrong-doing and nobody could show any harm or damages of any kind, the Cons used their House seats and communication skills to generate giant “scandals” which likely tipped the scales and got Trump into the White House.

In 2019 Pelosi did the opposite. She had a wealth of lies, corruption, misconduct, and crime and she made it all normal. By giving the dirtbags of MAGA a free pass, she prevented any of it from becoming a scandal. People have often wondered how it is that Trump seems to be scandal-proof. It is in large part because Nancy systematically normalized his massive crime spree.

Remember Newt Gingrich? Remember how aggressively he went after Bill Clinton? No stone went unturned. No insignificant infraction went unexposed. He and his people were determined to hold Clinton accountable for anything he had ever done. It was scandal generation on steroids.

Now imagine what a competent Democratic House Speaker aggressively pursuing oversight would have done against Trump. All the evidence was there, publicly available. All he’d have to do was present the case to the people. He wouldn’t even have to exaggerate. He’d have divided his caucus into 20 committees to cover topics like Hush Money Payments, Bribes from the Saudis, Bribes from Erdogan, Bribes from Russia, Kuwaiti Emoluments, Conflicts of Interest, Non-Payment of Debts, Fake University, Charity Fraud, Perjury, and so on. Then he’d have implemented a scandal of the week program, highlighting and summarizing the evidence of crimes found by each committee, and presenting new articles of impeachment. By the end of the year he would have impeached the Orange One 50 times. He would have made history by accomplishing the greatest feat of oversight ever.

Anyone who believed in the rule of law would have been thrilled to see our lawmakers actually trying to uphold the law. Every week there would have been a new, very public shaming of Republican Senators for again voting to protect the corrupt criminal idiot. Real action by House leadership in 2019 would have transformed our political landscape.

In war defense is easier than offense. In politics the opposite is true. If I accuse my opponent of roasting and eating a dog at a pool party in 2005, it doesn’t really matter if it’s true or not. I have successfully set the narrative. For several days that’s the only thing anyone will talk about. Keeping control of the narrative is an excellent way to win elections.

For decades now the Democrats have been almost exclusively on defense. Back in the Summer of 1988 Dukakis was way ahead in the polls. The elder Bush went on the attack, Dukakis refused to “go negative” and got crushed. It’s been like that ever since.

Using ceaseless accusations, the Republicans have managed to keep control of the narrative, making them tremendously persuasive. Their shameless lies convinced huge numbers of Americans that Gore claimed he invented the internet (He never said anything of the kind.), that Obamacare would destroy the U.S. economy (It didn’t), that Republicans balance budgets (They don’t), and so on.

The solution to this problem was to go on offense. No one even had to make up any clever propaganda. Just telling the truth was enough. The stumbling block we kept tripping over, however, was that no prominent Democrat would tell the unvarnished truth.

How many times has Pelosi said “Trump is a criminal”, “Trump is corrupt”, or “Trump is a fascist”? The answer is never. We never got any straight talk from her. Regular citizens were incredibly frustrated by that. Democrats who followed politics fell in love with Never Trump Republicans like Steve Schmidt because they were willing to accurately describe our political situation without euphemisms or prevarication. Schmidt did not hesitate to attack Trump with everything he had. We loved him for it. Then one day out of the blue comes Stormy Daniels’s lawyer, Michael Avenatti. He also used very direct simple truthful statements to attack the orange dimwit liar. He instantly became a hero. People wanted him to run for president. That’s how big the thirst for someone, anyone on the left, to just aggressively tell the truth was.

Coming from Avenatti those attacks were excellent, but… Avenatti was also a crook who kept stealing money from his clients and went to prison for it.

That same unvarnished truth, told by an effective communicator who also held high office, like House Minority Leader or Speaker of the House of Representatives, would have had far greater impact.

People with communications skills are a dime a dozen. Our universities train them by the thousands. The ones with natural talent get very good at it. Congressional Democrats would have no trouble hiring people who are excellent at it if they wanted to. Among the roughly 200 Dems in the House of Representatives their is a fairly large portion of eloquent competent communicators. Co-ordinating a smart anti-fascist message however, comes down to whoever is picked as leader. So we run into the problem of Nancy's iron fist.

Imagine if Pelosi had resigned back in 2010 and House Dems elected a leader with a modicum of charisma and willingess to fight. What would a competent active head of the party have said when Trump claimed he had no conflicts of interest because he had put his business interests in a trust run by his two sons, and showed stacks of BLANK PAPER as proof that it was all legally done?

How would a Dem House Speaker with communications skills have described the hush money payments to a porn star? What would a smart patriot have said about the president’s son-in-law getting a $2 billion loan from the Saudis? What would an aggressive Speaker fighting for democracy say about Erdogan’s thugs beating up Americans on the streets of Washington D.C.? When Trump admitted committing obstruction of justice (the same crime they impeached Bill Clinton for) on TV to Lester Holt, would a competent leader say “Oh, that don’t matter. That’s just POTUS grossly violating the law in order to cover up other crimes he committed.”?

Nancy Pelosi was the worst person to have as leader during those critical years. Her inaction went largely unnoticed. If you do nothing, you never make any mistakes. But her shocking lethargy in the face of rising evil, in practice, enabled the worst slimeball ever to get away with amazing crimes and build a huge power base.

Pelosi is not solely responsible for the rise of the Trump’s Fascist Movement. There is lots of blame to go around. But of all the people who enabled him, she was the one with the Constitutional Power to fight back, and she was the one with the Constitutional Duty to act. She took an oath. She grossly shit all over that oath, and enjoyed all the perks of power without having to get her hands dirty with any of that nasty oversight business.