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You are here: Home / Open Threads / Excellent Links / Proud to Be A Democrat: Nancy Smash, Still Fighting

Proud to Be A Democrat: Nancy Smash, Still Fighting

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I never did post my review of Molly Ball’s Pelosi when it first came out, but now that it’s available in paperback, I’ll just offer my highest recommendation. Ball is always an interesting writer, and Speaker Pelosi is an excellent subject, of course!

And now there’s a new book, Madam Speaker: Nancy Pelosi and the Lessons of Power, by Susan Page:

On her 100th day as speaker of the 117th Congress, Nancy Pelosi discussed the dramatic events that opened her tenure, when a mob that stormed the Capitol wanted to kill her.

“That’s what they were setting out to do,” she told USA TODAY, if her security agents hadn’t managed to evacuate her from the House chamber in time. Asked if that frightened her, she replied, “Well, I’m pretty tough. I’m a street fighter. They would have had a battle on their hands.”…

In a wide-ranging interview, Pelosi described a historic start for the new Congress and President Joe Biden, one “on par” in ambition and impact with the first 100 days of FDR and LBJ. She called Biden skilled in Washington politics and bolder in policy than many expected. “Transformative and visionary and experienced,” she said…

She said she would soon introduce legislation to harden the Capitol’s security, indicating she would support the installation of retractable fencing to be deployed only when security threats demanded. She also suggested for the first time that she might move to establish a select committee to investigate the Jan. 6 insurrection if efforts to create a special 9/11-style commission failed…

When Pelosi talked about the Jan. 6 assault, her voice became lower and more intense.

“I was never personally afraid because I had so much security for myself,” she said. “I was afraid for everybody else, and I’ll never forgive them the trauma that they caused to the staff and the members.” …

Asked about the first 100 days of what is expected to be her last term as speaker, she rattled off priorities the House already has passed, though most are now stalled in the Senate. They include an anti-corruption and ethics bill. A criminal justice bill named for George Floyd; the police officer who killed him is now on trial in Minneapolis. An immigration measure to provide a path to citizenship for “dreamers,” young people brought to this country illegally as children.

“The point is we have more than a vision – a vision with specifics,” she said. “And we’re hoping that the Senate will be able to follow through on some of them, all of them I would hope.”

She said she hasn’t been surprised by the willingness of Biden, who campaigned as a centrist, to pursue a bold agenda once in office. “Understand that nothing really surprises me,” she said, but acknowledged that it was unexpected by some. “I think he is meeting the needs of the American people, and if people want to call that progressive? Hallelujah, that’s a good thing.”

With passage of the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill and the approaching debate over a $2.3 trillion stimulus bill, she said, “I feel like I had landed in the promised land of legislation.”

Per The Hill:

… In the book by journalist Susan Page, excerpts of which were obtained by Punch Bowl News, Pelosi expresses her frustration with McConnell and blasts him for his refusal to allow the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to lie in state in the Capitol Rotunda following her death last year.

Ginsburg did lie in state at the Capitol, becoming the first woman to do so, but she was in the Statuary Hall on the House side of the building. McConnell and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) did not attend the service.

“Mitch McConnell is not a force for good in our country,” Pelosi told Page. “He is an enabler of some of the worst stuff, and an instigator of some of it on his own.”

Reader Interactions

38Comments

  1. 1.

    Baud

    The shock and pain @SpeakerPelosi felt when she realized Trump would win the presidency “was physical; it was actually physical,” she told @SusanPage. “Like a mule kicking you in the back over and over again.”

    Right there with you, Madam Smash.

  2. 2.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    But her ice cream!

    He called her “as effective as any legislative leader I’ve seen in managing a diverse and often contentious group of folks with a lot of different points of view.”

    I didn’t read the Ball book, but I read a long-is excerpt and listened to a couple of longer interviews. Pelosi spent years traveling the country and building up her network and her political base. She knows the country, I suspect, the way Bill Clinton did, state by state and district by district. I’ve often wondered how many politicians with national ambitions have sought out Nancy Pelosi’s advice. I wonder how many now wish they had…

  4. 4.

    Wyatt Salamanca

    In an excerpt from Susan Page’s upcoming book “Madam Speaker,” Speaker Pelosi expresses some tough sentiments about the current Senate minority leader and reveals the debate over the handling of RBG’s memorial. From Punchbowl:

    “Mitch McConnell is not a force for good in our country,” Pelosi told me. “He is an enabler of some of the worst stuff, and an instigator of some of it on his own.” The two congressional leaders had never had a particularly good relationship. Now there was bitterness from a new dispute between them, one not reported at the time. When Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died in September, Pelosi proposed that the groundbreaking feminist lie in state in the Capitol Rotunda. She would have been the first woman in history to be so honored.

    McConnell rejected the idea on the grounds that there was no precedent for such treatment of a justice. When William Howard Taft had lain in state in 1930, he had been not only the chief justice but also president, McConnell noted.

    He wasn’t swayed by the argument that Ginsburg had achieved an iconic status in American culture, especially for women and girls. McConnell’s refusal meant that Ginsburg’s flag-draped coffin was placed not in the Rotunda, which connects the House and Senate, but in Statuary Hall, on the House side.

     

    h/t https://www.mediaite.com/news/nancy-pelosi-reveals-mitch-mcconnell-blocked-ruth-bader-ginsburg-from-getting-capitol-rotunda-memorial/

  5. 5.

    UncleEbeneezer

    SwingLeft Podcast had a great episode where they interviewed Christine Pelosi, daughter of Nancy Smash.  It was really great.  Lots of stories about her and a great glimpse into her character/personality even behind closed doors.

  6. 6.

    DCrefugee

    Speaker Pelosi will go down as one of the century’s top ten most consequential legislators in the world…

  7. 7.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Wyatt Salamanca: I have the post with the answer to your question done. I was waiting for an hour to pass from Tom’s post to post it so I didn’t bigfoot him and AL bigoted him anyway. I’ll post it up around 10 PM EDT. So don’t go to bed early.

  8. 8.

    Mary G

    I look at her when the crush of misogyny in America is such a burden. “Grit it out” is something Republicans do while Democrats chase after shiny objects like primarying Manchin.

  12. 12.

    Wyatt Salamanca

    @Adam L Silverman:

    Adam, you deserve a raise from Cole!

    You and your fellow front pagers have consistently been a source of hope and sunlight in the midst of this nauseating dystopian nightmare. At some point, I hope to get the chance to either thank you at a physical BJ meetup or virtually at a BJ Zoom meetup.

    Keep up the fantastic work and please stay healthy (Your expertise is extremely valuable)!

  16. 16.

    Geminid

    Because of her age, Speaker Pelosi is sometimes cast as a typical career politician. But when Nancy Pelosi took first took public office as Congresswoman for the California 5th District in 1987, she was already 46 years old. Like some other woman politicians of her generation, Pelosi raised children before she entered electoral politics. This experience gave her a head start on male cohorts with longer tenure.

  17. 17.

    sab

    Having read Susan Page for several decades I frankly don’t give a fuck what she thinks about Pelosi.

  18. 18.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Wyatt Salamanca: You do understand we don’t get paid for doing any of this, right?

    At least I don’t. I’m pretty sure Cole pays everyone else and they’re all just lying to me.

  23. 23.

    Wyatt Salamanca

    @Adam L Silverman: 

    The last few months have very rough for me and I was making a poor attempt to be funny. Honestly speaking, I see a lot more depth and substance in your blog posts than in articles written by ridiculously overpaid mainstream media clowns.

  28. 28.

    Mary G

    This story has been all over my corner of LA Twitter for a couple days now, media finally noticed and The FTFNYT, LA Times, and most every paper in between have picked it up today, but it’s cool.

    A local idiot went hiking alone in the mountains, jokingly texted a a friend a picture of his legs hanging off a ledge of a canyon that looks like thousands of canyons, got lost, then his phone battery ran out.

    When a concerned friend reported Compean missing about 6 p.m. on Monday, officials didn’t have many leads. Compean’s car was found near the Buckhorn Campground, but they didn’t know which trail he took from there. The friend offered a grainy photo Compean had sent him that day of his legs hanging off a rocky cliff.

    With no ridgelines visible in the the photo and the terrain looking like much of the other terrain in the area, search and rescue teams had only a general idea of where to look in the large expanse of the mountains, Gilbert said. Windchill likely drove temperatures into the 30s Monday night. Time was was of the essence.

    After obtaining some cellular information from Compean’s provider, officials were able to locate a cell tower he “pinged” nearby and come up with a general location based on it. But it was still a large area to efficiently scour by foot. In an attempt to crowdsource ideas, authorities posted the image of the dangling legs on social media, news outlets — anywhere hiking enthusiasts or sleuths might see it.

    Thousand Oaks resident Ben Kuo identifies as both. An avid hiker, Kuo said he has a “strange hobby”: He loves looking at photos and figuring out where they’re taken.

    When he saw the photo posted by the Sheriff’s Department, he set to work pulling publicly available satellite images and matching them to the vegetation and terrain below the hiker’s legs.

    Kuo sent authorities the GPS coordinates he came up with. The rescue team found Compean about three-quarters of a mile from the spot, according to Kuo.

    Triplet Rocks, near where Compean was found, is considered “the least accessible peak in the San Gabriel mountains,” according to summitpost.org, a mountaineering website. There is no maintained route to the peak, according to the site, and getting to it can involve bushwhacking, navigating steep and loose slopes, and class 3 climbing.

    Gilbert said it would have taken rescue teams hours to get there on foot.

    The coordinates Kuo found were about a quarter mile from where the idiot was. Nerds, we get the job done!

  29. 29.

    VOR

    My guess is McConnell knew he was going to ram Coney Barrett through as fast as possible. Letting RBG lie in state had potential to delay that vote. But he didn’t control chambers on the House side of the building.

  30. 30.

    Danielx

    @Wyatt Salamanca:

    As if Pelosi needed any more reasons to detest Mitch McConnell, miserable shitbag that he is.

    There is a certain amount of divine judgment in that TFG has set his flying monkeys lose on one of his chief enablers and saviors. Your turn in the barrel, Mitch – did you think the sonofabitch was going to be grateful to you for protecting him from impeachment? You chump.

  31. 31.

    NotMax

    @Wyatt Salamanca

    “Welcome to Hell. I’m Ulthool and I’ll be your McConcierge. Any questions?”
    (pause)
    “No, I’m afraid the presidential suite is already booked.”

    //

  32. 32.

    Ksmiami

    I take heart that even Mitch McConnell’s kids hate him. I hope he dies a miserable and painful death – oh yes and soon…

  34. 34.

    trollhattan

    @DCrefugee:

    Yes. Also gets my vote for the most consequential woman politician in American history. She won’t agree but there it is, right in front of us.

  35. 35.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    for NYers and anyone who knows some

    Mark D. Levine @MarkLevineNYC 2h

    Folks in Brooklyn & Queens… There are now 10k+ vax appts each at Medgar Evers and York College, open to their respective boroughs. The appts are not moving fast enough. We have to work harder now to get the word out. Book here.

  36. 36.

    J R in WV

    @Wyatt Salamanca:

    If Hell exists, I hope Mitch McConnell and his wife get sent there.

    If Hell does not yet exist, the death of Mitch McConnell would be cause for it to spring into existence… would it not?

    I’m not sure Ms Chow is any where near McConnell’s depth of evil, being just a run of the mill crook. McConnell is special, a real doozy of a bad person, who’s evil spreads across the entire world, causing suffering and death everywhere.

  37. 37.

    J R in WV

    @Ksmiami:

    I take heart that even Mitch McConnell’s kids hate him. I hope he dies a miserable and painful death – oh yes and soon…

    I would actually prefer that McConnell live a very long time — but be completely unable to fulfill any official duties, unable to communicate, to feed himself, etc. Fully aware of his inabilities. Miserable, indeed, for many more years.

    My father was a kind and generous man. I was pleased to be able to help him in his old age as he had helped me so much as a youth. I miss him still 16+ years later on.

    It is was actually hard for me to grasp that so many Republicans have actually driven their own children away. Manafort’s daughters changed their name to avoid being connected to the man! McConnell’s children dislike him as well.

    Trump’s children, well, the less said the better on that issue!!

  38. 38.

    Heywood J.

    I appreciate the Speaker’s tenacity. I don’t expect her to fight MAGA zombies in the streets. I just wish she could find a way to expel the open seditionists in her House, or at least make every day for them more miserable than the one before it.

    Relying on the wisdom of the electorate may not be such a viable option in another eighteen months, thanks to the saintly Senators Mansion and Cinema, and their [hocks giant loogie] principles. Time is getting shorter every day. May she kick ass and take names.

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