Nancy With the Smug Face

On the one hand . . . Nancy Pelosi is an aging, elitist bourgeois liberal who's out of touch with both mainstream America and the younger members of the Democratic Party rank and file, and she really ought to step out of the way and let someone else be Speaker of the House of Representatives . . . someone who is more in tune with Main Street and less in tune with K Street.

On the other hand . . . Nancy Pelosi is a masterful leader who can advance the progressive agenda and progressive legislation by prioritizing important bills and programs that show effective, competent governance and saving the left wing from its worst, most self-destructive impulses.

*SIGH* . . .  I listen to one side and they sound right, and then I listen to the other side, and, God! - they sound just as right, and I'm right back where I started.  President Warren Harding probably had more clarity when he said the same thing about the 1921 tax bill.  But I guess it doesn't matter which side I think is right, for it appears that Nancy Pelosi is going to become Speaker once again, the first Speaker since Sam Rayburn to serve nonconsecutive terms . . . and at 78 the oldest Speaker of the House since John McCormack.  

Pelosi has survived not just because of her effective leadership of and fundraising abilities for House Democrats but because she has isolated potential successors from her inner sphere, making challenges to her control of the House Democratic caucuses fool's games - as Tim Ryan, depicted as a fool by Pelosi-friendly pundits, found out when he ran for House Democratic leader for the now-closing 115th Congress.   Ryan, a white guy from Ohio, has refused to challenge Pelosi, and the most plausible alternative candidate for Speaker to emerge was a black gal, Ryan's fellow Ohioan Marcia Fudge.  But she declined to go for it.  Oh, Fudge!

Pelosi's closest confidantes are incoming House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland and incoming House Majority Whip James Clyburn of South Carlina, two chaps not much younger than she is.  The House Democratic leadership is such a gerontocracy that even the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints' First Presidency must be wondering when they're going to get new blood.  But she did pass the Affordable Care Act, and she also . . . umm . . . well, she passed the Affordable Care Act.  And since the Democrats need experienced leadership, and since Tim Ryan was told in no uncertain terms what he could do with himself when he expressed interest in where and how he could get that experience, oh, well, we just might let Nancy have another go at the speakership.

I'm right back where I started.