OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
Democrat House Speaker and California Rep. Nancy Pelosi is hitting back after a new book claims that she blamed progressive members of her caucus for losses in the house in the 2020 election.
The book, penned by New York Times reporters Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns, “This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden, and the Battle for America’s Future,” highlights the Speaker’s frustrations with progressives, Punchbowl News reported.
The book said that Speaker Pelosi even took aim at Reps. Pramila Jayapal, the head of the House Progressive caucus, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and claimed she said that the two were vying to be the “queen bee” of the progressives.
“In a few strictly confidential conversations she pointed a finger leftward,” the book said. “Pelosi told one senior lawmaker that Democrats had alienated Asian and Hispanic immigrants with loose talk of socialism. In some of the same communities, the Italian Catholic speaker said, Democrats had not been careful enough about the way they spoke about abortion among new Americans who were devout people of faith.”
“She told another House Democrat that Pramila Jayapal and Ocasio-Cortez were vying to be the ‘queen bee’ of the left, but that their reward might be serving in the House minority after the next election,” she said.
Business Insider reported:
In the fall of 2021, congressional Democrats tried to pass both components of President Joe Biden’s economic agenda in a bipartisan infrastructure bill focusing on roads, bridges, green energy, and transportation, and a much pricier economic spending package including childcare, social programs, and climate spending that known as the Build Back Better agenda that Senate Democrats would pass along party lines.
But moving both measures at the same time proved to be an immense challenge, with progressives withholding their support for the infrastructure package in protest of what they saw as a lack of commitment to Build Back Better from centrists.
Pelosi, who famously only brings bills to the floor when she knows she has the votes to pass them, had to cancel two planned votes for the infrastructure bill on September 30 and again on October 29.
But the Speaker hit back at the “gossip” in the new book, Fox News reported.
“Under the Speaker’s leadership, House Democrats have made historic progress for the American people and are unified by the common purpose of addressing the needs of hardworking families,” her spokesperson Drew Hammill said.
“Many books will be written about the challenges of legislating during the pandemic and a period of unprecedented Republican obstruction, and we won’t be commenting on the works that substitute gossip for fact,” he said.
This comes after a Punchbowl News poll taken among senior House staffers found that 60% believe that the California Democrat will retire after the midterm elections.
“The poll also sampled general House staffers. Among the typical House staffers, 54 percent said Pelosi will retire. Congressional staffers are personnel that assists members of Congress and committees, answer constituent mail, write questions for committee hearings, conduct communication duties, and plot legislative maneuvers,” Breitbart reported.
“That more senior staffers believe Pelosi will retire likely comes from more experience and therefore carries more weight. Senior staffers told Punchbowl News Pelosi would not announce her retirement in the middle of a congressional session. But they do acknowledge Pelosi has previously said this would be her last term as speaker,” the outlet added.
National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Tom Emmer is very confident that Republicans will take back the U.S. House of Representatives.
During an interview with Breitbart, Emmer said Republicans are going to retire House Speaker Nancy Pelosi once and for all.
Emmer said Republicans “should find a candidate or candidates, they should share their treasure by supporting them financially, they should share their talents by offering to volunteer in a campaign, because look, the world is run by those who show up and those who show up and do the work, they own our freedom, and there’s never been a time like right now, Matt, to get involved and take a position.”
“If you sit back and be quiet, you’re not gonna be happy with what these socialist Democrats are gonna do to our country, cause this is no longer a choice between a degree of freedom — the right of someone to self-determine versus the size and scope of government — this is literally a choice between two fundamentally different views of the United States of America. On one side, the socialists, they wanna make all the decisions for you. On the other side, we still believe in free markets and the right of people to achieve their American dream on [sic] by hard work and playing by the rules,” he said.
