I am not a member of the House of Representatives.
Are you a member of the House of Representatives?
If you are, then I wish you well for the coming term, and I hope you gather the best ideas here. I also hope, though, that you have an independence of mind and spirit, because the Democratic Party asks its representatives to listen to the voters more than its centralized officers.
Here’s the thing. If you are not a House member, then, and this is a grave disappointment to many, you get no vote in who becomes Speaker. What’s more, unlike issues of the economy, health care availability, the environment’s protection, or energy policy, in which you participate, you’re just not qualified to make much of a ruling or have a very informed point of view on who is the best speaker, provided the candidates are generally qualified.
I know that we like to scrap. We like to fight the primary wars long after general elections. We believe there is some “progressive vs. pragmatist” fight going on. (If there is, I hope it never ends, because it’s part of the dialectic that ensures growth and creativity. A progressive view that “wins” instantly becomes status quo and calls forth another insurgent force. Ask the Republicans what it means to “win” the battle going in the opposite direction — what it means to have “everyone” become “conservative.”)
That said, we ought to leave this one alone, because one of our greatest weaknesses is listening to the opposition.
The Story out there is that we are fractious, disunited, dreamers, and therefore that we are impractical and easy to dismiss. When Freedim Cacus fights the paleo-conservatives who had back-stabbed the conservatives, the narrative is that there is a “conservative revolution” or an “insurgency” or a “populist uprising.” When the Progressive Caucus demands a zero emissions target, we read that crazy hippies are squandering political capital with unrealistic goals.
In 1994, Newt Gingrich inserted himself into national politics. He came out with the Contract with America. He had a huge press event on the steps of the Congress, saying that he and the Republicans were going to remake America and ignore Clinton. The Democrats ran against Gingrich in the by-elections and kicked the GOP’s butt in 1996. Ever since then, the GOP has tried to run against the Democratic leader in the House. It has picked a voodoo doll Democrat.
The Republicans can’t tell the difference between a Speaker who made himself famous, posed before the cameras, and tried to make the Speaker position a rival to the presidency and the quotidian Speakers Democrats have had. They have run against Hillary Clinton for decades, and they have run against Nancy Pelosi.
We are us. We are not defined by, do not react to, and will not think according to the Republican narrative. The Republicans will rampage about Pelosi regardless. If not her, it will be Alexandra Ocassio-Cortez, or Elizabeth Warren. We know their game, and we can ignore it. We can ignore it because their slander game doesn’t work. It also doesn’t matter.
So, what does matter for being Speaker? This is something for members to decide. I would suggest that knowledge of legislative trickery, knowledge of Roberts Rules and parliamentary control, ability to persuade, cajole, and coerce members, discipline to pursue a single goal at a time to completion, coalition building, and desire/willingness to share resources for group success against a monolithic opposition would be top considerations. Leader Pelosi is, like everyone, aging. Her last tenure as Speaker was a modified success that might mean good or bad things, depending on the voting member’s point of view.
All I know is that I’m not voting, and neither are most of you. I trust this group of members more than any in my lifetime.
I feel better about the Democratic Party in the House than I have since 1976. We can stand down, stack arms, and let our elected representatives vote without all the heckling.