Where Was This Nancy Pelosi During the 2010 Campaign?

Former Speaker of the House Now Shows Intelligence, Humor and Determination

The person most responsible for the devastating defeat that Democrats suffered in the 2010 mid term elections was not President Obama but former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D, Ca).  Ms Pelosi was made the poster child for all that is wrong with the Federal government and Washington, and her image in thousands of campaign ads turned those elections into a notational referendum on Congress.  Ms. Pelosi did not fight back effectively, and Congress, as would be expected, lost big time.

Ms. Pelosi has stayed on in Congress as Minority Leader of the House, a move criticized by The Dismal Political Economist.  As the single most important reason why Democrats lost the House, he felt she should have stepped down.  After a recent news report though, he now admits he may have been wrong.

Ms. Pelosi’s recent reaction to a weird challenge to debate from Republican Presidential candidate Rick Perry was funny without being mean.  She explained she had three previous commitments, but of course could only remember two, reflecting on the fact that Mr. Perry could not remember the third government department he would eliminate.

In other comments Ms. Pelosi

Asked what she thought of the cheering that followed Cain’s mention of “Princess Nancy,” she said: “This is the same audience that gave [Rick] Perry a standing ovation when no one knew what he was on.”

And while her task of winning back the House for the Democrats is almost impossible, she is trying

Last week, the California congresswoman hit five cities in five days, barnstorming for money to try to win the 25 more seats it would take to regain control.

Her legislative priority is admirable, particularly compared with the priority of her Republican colleagues whose main goal is to enact tax cuts for the wealthy and gut social programs.

when Pelosi takes a shot based on gender, she’s not afraid to mention that next on her agenda is the mother of all women’s issues: child care. Under fire for health-care legislation that conservatives consider a big-government power grab, she’s happy to promise more of the same.

Of the need for child-care legislation, she says, “I could never get a babysitter — have five kids in six years and no one wants to come to your house. . . . And everywhere I go, women say the same thing” about how hard it is to find the kind of reliable care that would make their family lives calmer and work lives more productive. When it comes to “unleashing women” in a way that would boost the economy, she says, “this is a missing link.”

And her take on abortion rights for women brings this observation

Catholic health-care providers in particular have long said they’d have to go out of business without the conscience protections that Pelosi says amount to letting hospitals “say to a woman, ‘I’m sorry you could die’ if you don’t get an abortion.” Those who dispute that characterization “may not like the language,’’ she said, “but the truth is what I said. I’m a devout Catholic and I honor my faith and love it . . . but they have this conscience thing’’ that she insists put women at physical risk, although Catholic providers strongly disagree.

which is just another example that when Conservatives talk about abortion rights going against the Catholic religion, they are talking about it going against the administration of the Church, and not all of its followers.

Also on abortion rights she has this

On one occasion, she said, laughing, one of her critics on the topic of abortion, speaking on the House floor, said, “Nancy Pelosi thinks she knows more about having babies than the pope. They think like this. And of course I do — I think the pope would agree — and I know more than you, too, mister.’’

All of this results in the observation that if that Nancy Pelosi had been this smart and aggressive in the mid term election, this Nancy Pelosi might be campaigning now to retain her Speakership instead of campaigning to regain it.