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Ear to the Ground

House Leadership Same As It Ever Was

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Posted on Nov 17, 2010
Flickr / Speaker Pelosi (CC-BY)

John Boehner will be the next speaker of the House. Now on to the bigger news: Nancy Pelosi’s leadership was retained by the surviving House Democrats. She will be minority leader, having beaten one Heath Shuler, 150-43.

The New York Times:

The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi of California, was re-elected on Wednesday to lead the Democrats in the next Congress, despite her party’s loss of more than 60 seats and its majority control of the House in the midterm elections.

Officials said that Ms. Pelosi defeated Representative Heath Shuler of North Carolina in an internal party vote, 150 to 43. Mr. Shuler acknowledged before the vote that he had no chance of winning, but he wanted to give disgruntled Democrats a chance to register their opposition to Ms. Pelosi’s leadership anyway.

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G.Anderson's avatar

By G.Anderson, November 18, 2010 at 2:12 am Link to this comment

It’s an unusual dress she’s wearing, one side lime green, the other side emerald green. A dress with a spilt personality. Just like our congress.

It’s a bi partisan, green dress….

Is bi partisan, anything like double cross?

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By mdgr, November 18, 2010 at 12:26 am Link to this comment

Oh, I wouldn’t suggest depending on billionaires either. Still, I am glad that the Koch Bros. don’t have a corner on the market.

I also find it of interest that it’s Soros who’s making these noises. It sure isn’t Reid or Pelosi. It isn’t Robert Scheer or Arianna Huffington.

Soros, at least, isn’t just clicking his tongue. He isn’t just scratching his fanny. He’s suggesting open rebellion.

Do you know anybody in the Congressional progressive caucus who’s recently said as much??

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Queenie's avatar

By Queenie, November 17, 2010 at 10:51 pm Link to this comment

Is there a list somewhere of who voted against her? I would like to thank them.

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By Inherit The Wind, November 17, 2010 at 10:03 pm Link to this comment

Of course they are clueless fools. Tone-deaf and even their defenders are saying so.  Eugene Robinson and E.J. Dionne have both said so.

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Robespierre115's avatar

By Robespierre115, November 17, 2010 at 8:20 pm Link to this comment

Well, looks like the Democrats really are clueless fools.

As for the comment below on Soros, Alexander Cockburn recently wrote a good article on why depending on billionaires, no matter what flag they wave, is unwise:

http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn10082010.html

This great passage from the article says it all:

“Back at the dawn of the twentieth century Lenin and Martov were organizing their international Congresses and looking for grant money to this end. Martov, the Menshevik, told Lenin he must absolutely stop paying for the hotels and halls with money hijacked by Stalin from Georgian banks in Tblisi. Lenin reassured Martov, and then asked Stalin to knock over another bank which he did, Europe’s record bank heist up till that time. It was one way, perhaps the only way, past the grip of cautious millionaires. Then as now.”

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By mdgr, November 17, 2010 at 5:30 pm Link to this comment

Nothing changes but then that’s not particularly surprising.

What is a bit surprising is Soros’ recent comment. Soros is a banker, true, but in Nader’s recent novel “Only the Super-rich Can Save Us,” he was also cast as a hero, of sorts. He and others like him (Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, for example) have a strong instinct for survival, and they have to know where things are headed in 2012.

I’m not sure exactly what he actual meant (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/17/george-soros-obama_n_785022.html ), but his statement was both strategic and nuanced, at the very least. He seems to be stating that Obama has betrayed the progressive cause. How he could say that without simultaneously pointing to the DNC (along with the Democratic leadership) as a complicitous party?

My guess is that he sees the writing on the wall for 2012, which includes an even bigger Democratic loss and maybe a loss too for the R’s. Though that is purely speculative, it would give the ultra-right even more power, and that’s not what Soros wants.

Speculative too is the possibility that he is trying to seriously move progressives off their collective ass into the realm of action. He isn’t talking a third party yet, however.  He is wanting progressive Dems to assert themselves, but if their leaders are Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, he probably knows that we’re looking at yet another crash-landing in 2012.

So what is he actaully thinking and where is he going with this? Whatever it is, it’s probably substantive change, and not just a cosmetic one.

The only substantive change that would be likely to pass Soros’s own implicit litmus test is a break-away movement.

He gave money to the California initiative to to decriminalize marijuana. One can only hope he’s willing to underwrite initiative that will undermine the two party system in America. Am not holding my breath nor suggesting that he will, I’m just saying that this his statement portended an interesting and perhaps not insignificant development.

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