by Pa rock
Citizen Journalist
Chuckles Schumer has already been selected to continue his leadership as the Minority Leader in the Senate, thus ensuring that there will be a continuing lack of progressive energy in that caucus for at least two more years, and it now appears as though Nancy Pelosi is pulling out all of the political stops to guarantee that she retains control of the incoming Democratic majority in the House. And as those two old war horses plug on, it feels like nothing substantial was accomplished by the "blue wave" election. America's lobbying brigade, the true power of government, looks to have retained an iron-fisted control - regardless of what the voters thought they were accomplishing with their naive trip to the ballot box.
True, the Democratic Party lost ground in the Senate - though exactly how much is yet to be determined, so perhaps we deserve two more years of Schumer leadership for allowing that debacle. But Democrats won the House - and they won it with a platoon of candidates who, as a group, are far more diverse than anything the House of Representatives has ever experienced in its entire history - and many of the new freshman clearly promised voters that they would not support Nancy Pelosi for Speaker of the House. Voters wanted change, and a focal point of that change was the ouster of 78-year-old Pelosi from the party leadership.
Nancy Pelosi, who was born during the FDR administration and before the start of the Second World War, grew up in a powerful political family. Her father was a congressman from Maryland, and her father and brother each served as Mayor of Baltimore. She has served in Congress since the Reagan administration and was the nation's first - and so far only - female Speaker of the House of Representatives. She bills herself as someone who gets things done and tends to endlessly take credit for the passage of the Affordable Care Act - and she does deserve a good deal of the credit of that act's passage.
But that was then, and this is now.
Nancy Pelosi is also seen as someone whose real talent is milking money from corporate America - in much the same manner and to much the same effect as her House colleagues in the Republican leadership. She is very much at home with lobbyists and has a talent for maintaining the status quo, even when those around her are bucking for change.
Since last week's midterm elections, Nancy Pelosi has been in her relentless "arm-twisting" mode as she performs the political machinations necessary to maintain her power grip on the House. She is ruthless in her pursuit of the prize - the Speakership - and her minions are all over the place telling anyone who will listen how awful it would be if, after this important "change" election, a female was ousted from control of the Democratic Party in the House. (Never mind the fact that the House of Representatives now has more female Democratic members to choose from than at any other time in that institution's entire history.)
But Pelosi, who will be eighty before the next term of Speaker would expire, will not acknowledge her advancing age or declining abilities, stages that the rest of us necessarily experience, and she clings to the ship of state like an crazed barnacle. She won't let go, and she will not tolerate anybody trying to scrape her off of the rusting hulk of the Congress. Change starts somewhere down the road, but it definitely does not start here, not now.
Nancy Pelosi is going to take another spin on the Vanity-Go-Round, and God help anyone who tries to stop her. She is taking names and preparing to kick some Democratic butt.
Whippersnappers beware!
Citizen Journalist
Chuckles Schumer has already been selected to continue his leadership as the Minority Leader in the Senate, thus ensuring that there will be a continuing lack of progressive energy in that caucus for at least two more years, and it now appears as though Nancy Pelosi is pulling out all of the political stops to guarantee that she retains control of the incoming Democratic majority in the House. And as those two old war horses plug on, it feels like nothing substantial was accomplished by the "blue wave" election. America's lobbying brigade, the true power of government, looks to have retained an iron-fisted control - regardless of what the voters thought they were accomplishing with their naive trip to the ballot box.
True, the Democratic Party lost ground in the Senate - though exactly how much is yet to be determined, so perhaps we deserve two more years of Schumer leadership for allowing that debacle. But Democrats won the House - and they won it with a platoon of candidates who, as a group, are far more diverse than anything the House of Representatives has ever experienced in its entire history - and many of the new freshman clearly promised voters that they would not support Nancy Pelosi for Speaker of the House. Voters wanted change, and a focal point of that change was the ouster of 78-year-old Pelosi from the party leadership.
Nancy Pelosi, who was born during the FDR administration and before the start of the Second World War, grew up in a powerful political family. Her father was a congressman from Maryland, and her father and brother each served as Mayor of Baltimore. She has served in Congress since the Reagan administration and was the nation's first - and so far only - female Speaker of the House of Representatives. She bills herself as someone who gets things done and tends to endlessly take credit for the passage of the Affordable Care Act - and she does deserve a good deal of the credit of that act's passage.
But that was then, and this is now.
Nancy Pelosi is also seen as someone whose real talent is milking money from corporate America - in much the same manner and to much the same effect as her House colleagues in the Republican leadership. She is very much at home with lobbyists and has a talent for maintaining the status quo, even when those around her are bucking for change.
Since last week's midterm elections, Nancy Pelosi has been in her relentless "arm-twisting" mode as she performs the political machinations necessary to maintain her power grip on the House. She is ruthless in her pursuit of the prize - the Speakership - and her minions are all over the place telling anyone who will listen how awful it would be if, after this important "change" election, a female was ousted from control of the Democratic Party in the House. (Never mind the fact that the House of Representatives now has more female Democratic members to choose from than at any other time in that institution's entire history.)
But Pelosi, who will be eighty before the next term of Speaker would expire, will not acknowledge her advancing age or declining abilities, stages that the rest of us necessarily experience, and she clings to the ship of state like an crazed barnacle. She won't let go, and she will not tolerate anybody trying to scrape her off of the rusting hulk of the Congress. Change starts somewhere down the road, but it definitely does not start here, not now.
Nancy Pelosi is going to take another spin on the Vanity-Go-Round, and God help anyone who tries to stop her. She is taking names and preparing to kick some Democratic butt.
Whippersnappers beware!
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