I’ve admitted in the past that I wasn’t so sure Nancy Pelosi should be speaker again, but her performance since resuming to hold the gavel has definitely won me over.
For one thing, under Pelosi’s 2nd speakership the Democrats have shown something that we’ve been so unused to seeing from them: balls!
They have not caved in to Trump and his ridiculous $5 billion demand for a symbolic border wall. At the end of last week President Trump blinked, and agreed to reopen government – albeit only for three weeks – without receiving any border wall funding in return.
Let’s not forget that the Republicans pioneered the idea of negotiating via government shutdown.
- President Reagan got the ball rolling with several one-day shutdowns in 1981, 1984 and 1986.
- This way of negotiating really took form when Newt Gingrich forced a 5 day and then a 21 day shutdown in 1995-1996 in order to force his way in budget negotiations with Bill Clinton.
- Then, of course, we had the teaparty Republicans forcing a 16 day shutdown on President Obama in order to defund the Affordable Care Act.
- In January of 2018 the Senate Republicans forced a three day shut-down after refusing to negotiate about Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) protections (aka the “Dreamers”).
- Currently we have the 35 day shutdown because the Democrats have refused to cave to Trump and his border wall demands.
Trump had previously said that he would be “proud” to own the shutdown. And so he did. For her part, Pelosi correctly and very cleverly disinvited Trump from giving the State of the Union in the House Chamber. Since it is traditionally given in the House chamber, and that is another branch of government, Trump does need an invite. You know the Orange Moron had to be seething inside to be deprived of this high television opportunity, the chance to appear with both branches (and the Supreme Court) and pontificate on the state of our union (which, it should go without saying, is currently terrible, as bad as it’s even been since the Civil War).