Buckle up. This is gonna be a particularly unmutual post!
Anyway, a couple of weeks ago, I had a coffee conversation with a colleague and fellow Congress-watcher before the election, and among the topics about which we schmoozed was the Nancy Pelosi conflict roiling the Democratic caucus within the House of Representatives. The obvious question-- one of them, anyway-- was who the anti-Pelosi forces would find, if they wouldn't support her. There was simply a dearth of candidates, as I had been noting here.
But wait, one of us said! I have an idea! The perfect candidate! She's got all the right qualities of leadership! Marcia! MARCIA MARCIA MARCIA! Marcia Fudge. The perfect candidate, because, um...
Oh, I'm just fucking with you. That didn't happen. We both came to the conclusion that the Democrats didn't have anybody. You know what makes this funnier? We both work in Marcia Fudge's district! No joke! That's right, folks, Case Western Reserve University is in MARCIA, MARCIA, MARCIA's district. OK, I'm being extra asshole-ish here, because I'm me, but there's a point here. I'm a Congress scholar. I study Congress for a living. They actually pay me for it. I write about this. I just wrote a bleedin' book about Congress.
And I work in Marcia Fudge's district, and neither I nor my Congress-watchin', Ph.D.-havin' colleague thought, "hey! Marcia Fudge would be a real, solid alternative to Nancy Pelosi!"
So, little thing called "Fenno's Paradox." This is the observation named for Richard Fenno, perhaps the greatest Congress-watcher of them all. Most of us hate Congress, but like our own Members of Congress. I've met Fudge a couple of times, and unlike a lot of the jackasses in Congress, she seems to keep her nose clean. She can carry on an intelligent conversation, and I kinda like her. For me, that's saying something. After all, I basically dislike humanity. Remember-- me: misanthrope. But... Oh, the buts.
When I wrote my summary of the Democratic Party's leadership issues, I danced around the issue of identity politics because I was trying to avoid it. OK. No more.
White men. We are a minority of the population. Whites are technically a majority, but that'll end soon. (Yay!) Women, for reasons that biologists are better suited to explain than I am, are just over 50% of the population. Do the math, and white men are really a minority. We are a statistically advantaged minority, but a minority nonetheless. White privilege is a thing. A misunderstood thing, both by whites and many civil rights advocates, but it is a thing. What if it weren't? What if we had a completely meritocratic, race-blind, gender/sex/whatever-blind society? At any level, in any institution, white men would hold a minority of positions. Women would hold just over 50%. One might argue that self-selection could occur, and blah, blah, blah, but there's bad shit goin' on right now, OK? Let's just acknowledge that. The probability of any specific demographic getting a position would be that demographic's proportion of the population. The fact that it isn't is what strongly suggests a problem.
Compare the Republican Party to the Democratic Party. The former had a problem on the Judiciary Committee during the Kavanaugh hearings because they're all a bunch of white men who wanted to berate a rape victim. These two things are related. And, in order to do what they wanted to do, they needed to bring in a mercenary woman to ask all of the questions for them when Christine Blasey Ford was testifying because they were cowardly, little chickenshits who didn't want to let the optics of the hearings reveal the objective truth. Also, if you are paying attention to current committee assignments in the Senate, McConnell is trying to get women onto the Judiciary Committee to prevent stuff like that from happening again. He can't. They don't want those seats. He's trying to pressure Blackburn to accept a seat there, and maybe she'll take it, but none of the GOP women, few though they are, will accept those seats.
What happens if you throw out demographic concerns and just let talent rise to the top? Who's the most talented Representative in the House? Nancy Pelosi. None of you likely remember how she got to the top of the party, but here's the short version. Leadership PACs. (I actually wrote my doctoral dissertation on those semi-outdated things). When Dick Gephardt stepped down as Democratic leader in the House, the contest was between Pelosi and Steny Hoyer. They both raised money through their Leadership PACs and distributed it to the close contests to help the party win seats. They also raised money for the DCCC. Pelosi blew Hoyer out of the water. Then, she found his mangled corpse on the beach, stomped on it, tore it to shreds with her teeth, defecated on it, lit it on fire, doused the fire with napalm, dropped a thermonuclear warhead on the napalm fire and told everyone watching, "OK, motherfuckers, who's on my side, and who wants what Steny just got, 'cuz I'm giving that to the Republicans! FREEDOM!!!!" But that last bit without the anti-semitic, drunken rants at cops.
Did any of them care that Pelosi was a woman and that Hoyer was a man? Maybe, but they cared more about color. Specifically, green, and the skill it took to raise it. And the fact that she's way smarter. And then she did the job. Better than pretty much anyone in modern history. As much as I praise John Boehner, to be blunt, even when he was Speaker, he needed Pelosi to govern because his caucus of asylum escapees constantly needed Democrats to do the job for them. Every time there was a government shutdown, debt ceiling or something like that, Pelosi came to Boehner's rescue. So, yeah, I praise Boehner a lot, but even he couldn't do the job without Nancy Pelosi.
I couldn't even begin to list everything impressive in her legislative CV. Go through the list of legislative accomplishments from Obama's term (Obamacare, stimulus, Dodd-Frank, Lilly Ledbetter… take your pick), add in every non-collapse from the last six years of Obama's term that happened because Pelosi pulled Boehner's ass out of the fire, and if you think she's connected to elections, balance out 2010 and '14 with 2006 and the new majority in 2018, and holy fucking shit is she awesome!
And she didn't get the job because she is a woman. She's just badassery personified. The reason she walks on water is not that she has supernatural powers. She's treading on the dead bodies of vanquished foes, tossed carelessly into the water. Try that, Jesus!
On the other hand, Marcia Fudge is... um... uh... A nice person. I like her. I think she's one of the smarter ones too. Um... uh... If this sounds like comparing the star of the local jazz scene to Nina Simone, maybe you're getting my point. OK, you're alright, but can I go listen to Nina sing and play Sinnerman? She's Nina Simone! (Way more badass than Ella!)
Fudge has never held high leadership positions. Her list of major legislative accomplishments versus Nancy Pelosi's? No contest. You put their CVs up against each other, colorblind, and no sane person would even consider Marcia Fudge. And I like Marcia Fudge. And I'm a misanthrope. I've got the spirit of Richard Fenno standing over my shoulder telling me to check my biases, but I do like her. I'm just looking at her CV, comparing it to Nancy Pelosi's as a professional Congress-scholar and saying, "seriously?!"
Right now, there is a hunger in the Democratic Party for an African-American woman in a formal, governmental leadership position with institutional power. Statistically, were it not for racism and misogyny, that would have happened by now, and the fact that it hasn't tells us something. Kamala Harris is an interesting point of comparison here. You may notice that, as a general rule, I am rather dismissive of the lefty flavor of the day politician. I pretty much think Ocasio-Cortez is as much of a fool as Sanders, and she bugs me just as much. On the other hand, you may have noticed that my descriptions of Kamala Harris are a little more... swoony. It's all about badassery, and she has that. You see, I like smarts. The reason I dismiss Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez and other lefty heroes is that they don't impress me as smart. Harris is smart. And cool. Most importantly, she has a distinctive skill-- reducing her opponents to quivering masses of terror under the withering scorn of her skilled interrogation. Think back to what she did to little Jeffy Sessions during his confirmation hearings. Oh, it was glorious. Whatever else could be said about a potential Harris nomination in 2020, tell me you wouldn't want to see her rip into Donny on a debate stage. Remember that moment when the creepy perv walked up behind Clinton? And she did nothing? She wrote about wanting to say something, but... Dream, and fantasize about what Harris would do to that little shit.
That's why I think the elevation of Harris's stature makes sense. She has a thing. Coolness and badassery. Two things. And an almost fanatical devotion to The Pope. And one can see how this leads to the idea of nominating her in 2020. Are her traits of appeal the kinds of traits that would make one a good president? I'd like a president who can keep her cool. If you are a computer programmer with a bad temper... so what? As long as your code works, you're just another maladjusted computer programmer. Trump's inability to keep his cool is a problem for the job. You see what I'm getting at here.
Dismissing candidates for jobs on the basis of race or gender is stupid. Think about the long history of racism and misogyny. Who is the greatest historical genius about whom we know? Ask a mathematician and they'll probably say, Isaac Newton. A reasonable choice all-around. Dude was scary-smart. But, do you think it is an accident that the name is that of a white dude? How much genius has been thrown out by racism and misogyny? Think about slavery. How many geniuses, smarter than anyone you've ever met, were tortured and murdered, probably because they weren't compliant? Geniuses and compliance don't always go together. And even if they hadn't been murdered, their genius still would have gone ignored. The injustice of slavery itself is the greater offense, but it is worth pointing out, as a much lesser observation, the loss to the world of ignoring the talent of people deemed lesser because of bigotry. Assess people by their skills and talents, and the world benefits. Unless you want a world without modern medicine, etc.
Letting talent dictate outcome is how the Democratic Party got Nancy Pelosi. The Republican Party has never had a woman, or African-American rise so high in the ranks. Unless you count Sarah Palin, or maybe Joan Quigley, who was that fucking astrologer that Ronald Reagan turned to for advice... Not joking this time. I wish I were.
And here we are. The Democratic Party is currently trying to decide whether or not to throw out perhaps the greatest Speaker of the modern era. When Jim Wright was ousted as Speaker, it was because of ethics scandals. Those ethics scandals were forced to the forefront by, ironically, Newt Gingrich, who was eventually forced out amid his own ethics scandals. After Gingrich, the GOP was going to install Bob Livingston, who had to step down after Larry Flynt's "bounty" on GOP infidelity during the Clinton impeachment mess turned up dirt on him. Even with John Boehner, there were at least semi-sincere disagreements between him and the Tea Party, even though the teabaggers were a bunch of idiots about their demands. They thought that they could get Obama to cave and repeal Obamacare if they just shut down the government and breached the debt ceiling. Stupid? Hell yes, but there was a real disagreement there, and it led to Boehner's downfall because the Tea Party didn't understand why Boehner wasn't getting the policies the Tea Party thought he should have been able to get. Yes, that was about policy outcomes, and the Tea Party's beliefs about what they should have been. They were idiots, but it was about policy.
Look, Marcia Fudge is untested. She could turn out to be great. She is nice and smart, but she is untested. Pelosi has run the toughest gauntlets that the GOP has ever devised, and she has proven herself the toughest badass around.
If the Democrats throw out Nancy Pelosi, in favor of Marcia Fudge, it will be because of pure demographics, and it will be a more foolish move than the sacking of John Boehner. I write this as an unapologetic fan of John Boehner, who puts him on a pedestal near Pelosi's.