Pelosi bows out
“The hour’s come for a new generation to lead the Democratic caucus that I so deeply respect,” said Nancy Pelosi when she announced she would not be seeking re-election to leadership in a speech on the House floor Thursday. Steny Hoyer will also be stepping aside.
This changing of the guard moment hardly comes as a big surprise. Pelosi, now eighty-two, has led her party in the House for two decades. But the smoothness of the transition to a new generation is striking. Brooklyn congressman Hakeem Jeffries is set to take over having been a long-standing favorite of Pelosi’s and the heir apparent in the eyes of his party. He formally announced his candidacy this morning with a letter to colleagues.
For a party that, prior to the midterms, many would have expected to be tearing itself apart by now, the passing of the baton looks set to be shockingly orderly. All the signs point towards House Democrats moving into the minority and its top leaders being picked without any major drama. The contrast with the other side of the aisle (more on that rabble next week) could hardly be more striking.
Like Biden, Pelosi has an old-fashioned understanding of politics. She is interested in power, not ideology. As Andrew Ferguson puts it: “She is famously the product of a political family. Her father and brother were both mayors of Baltimore in the ancien regime, when urban machines practiced a purely transactional politics that had no patience for ideological flights of fancy. To this day she remains more Baltimore than San Francisco, more party boss than party ideologist. The disdain she feels for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Squad of left-wingers is undisguised. Her understanding of politics is sounder than theirs.” Paradoxically, this understanding of politics also made Pelosi (and Biden) less resistant to the party’s leftwards drift.
It’s impossible not to be impressed by Pelosi’s achievement. Indeed, even ideological foes expressed their admiration of Pelosi’s efficacy. “Totally dominant,” was Newt Gingrich’s verdict. “She’s clearly one of the strongest speakers in history. She has shown enormous perseverance and discipline.”
Unlike Biden, Pelosi knows when the jig is up. I feel mildly ridiculous congratulating an eighty-two-year-old who has clung on for so long for knowing when to step aside. But the bar is low in America’s gerontocracy. I hope the president, and, for that matter, his predecessor, are watching and taking notes.
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We need to talk about Kevin
One person not present for Nancy Pelosi’s farewell speech: possible successor as speaker Kevin McCarthy. “I had meetings,” he said, explaining his absence. “But normally the others would do it during votes. I wish she could have done that — could have been there.”
McCarthy may have cleared the first hurdle to becoming the next speaker, but the path to the January vote will be a bumpy one. This morning Andy Biggs declared that he is a no on McCarthy. As has Matt Gaetz. Yesterday, talking to CNN’s Manu Raju, Biggs said: “He doesn’t have the votes.” And yet, even if it looks tricky for McCarthy to get to the 218 votes he needs by January 3, the path doesn’t look much easier for anyone else.
The new crossover districts
The votes are still being counted in various midterm House races (get it together California!), but the landing spot is getting clearer, with the Republicans set to hold between 213 and 222 seats, meaning they will deal with roughly the same sized majority as the Democrats have over the last two years. One telling tidbit about the results. As Dave Wasserman points out, the next Congress will, in one respect, have a more purplish hue: “We already know 2022 was a depolarizing election in at least one respect: the number of ‘crossover districts’ — seats held by the party opposite the most recent presidential winner — is poised to rebound from the current total of sixteen seats, an all time low.” The likeliest scenario would see that figure rise to twenty-three.
What you should be reading today
Ashley Rindsberg: Can Twitter still be saved?
Patrick Ruffini: The electoral mediocrity of Donald Trump
Ben Domenech: Nancy Pelosi won’t go away
Vivek Ramaswamy and Jen Rubenfeld, Wall Street Journal: The new woke discrimination demands a new law
Margaret Talbot, New Yorker: J. Edgar Hoover, public enemy no. 1
Ben Murrey, National Review: Colorado’s tax revolution continues
Poll watch
President Biden job approval
Approve: 42.0 percent
Disapprove: 54.5 percent
Net approval: -12.5 (RCP average)
2024 Republican nomination
Trump: 47 percent
DeSantis: 33 percent
Pence: 5 percent (Politico/Morning Consult)
