I’m missing Nancy Pelosi already.
I called my daughter when Pelosi was elected Speaker to discuss the historic nature of the event, but she didn’t pick up, and I had moved on by the time I saw her. If she had picked up, I’m sure I’d have some profound yet spontaneous exchange to share with you.
Instead, here’s my favorite Pelosi quote:
So the Democrats would thunderously attack Bush and argue there was no Social Security crisis and therefore no need for them to put out their own proposal. Some members were leery, concerned that Pelosi would make the Democrats look like the Party of No.
As the spring of 2005 wore on, some pestered her every week, asking when they were going to release a rival plan. “Never. Is never good enough for you?” Pelosi defiantly said to one member.
I’m still nursing a grudge on this:
Nancy Pelosi has been an extremely effective speaker of the House for four years, shepherding hundreds of important bills toward passage and withstanding solid Republican opposition. Her work in passing health care reform and strong ethics oversight achieved what many thought was legislatively impossible. But is she really the best the Democrats can come up with as their leader as they slip into the minority?
She’s incredibly effective and hardworking, so, naturally, in our meritocracy, that means she should forget about running for a leadership position.
Pelosi should have spent less time working and more time crying. The suckers in the media love that stuff.
stuckinred
“Pelosi should have spent less time working and more time crying.”
that only works for pukes
artem1s
MSM, plz. Nancy has actual legislative experience. Palin a reality TV show and a traveling sideshow of a family. So who would the better candidate be for the WH? Not that Nancy would want it or consider challenging a sitting Dem prez but its just absurd that she isn’t mentioned in the same circles as the effective, kick ass leader she is.
substance never, ever counts with the village.
aimai
My favorite Pelosi quote can’t be found–the hate links are so thick that when you try to google Pelosi with any part of a remembered quote you get pages and pages of anti Pelosi hysteria. However, I will always love her for saying, in the depths of the struggle over health care reform “If the door is closed you go through the gate, if the gate is closed you go over the wall…” or something like that.
aimai
*And boy is it salutory to look up her name on google. The boiling hatred of her is just poisonous. What a gutsy woman.
Kay
@stuckinred:
Here’s my second-favorite quote:
“I don’t consider myself a moderate.”
N. Pelosi, 2007
TenguPhule
To be fair, while she did her best to herd the cats of the Democratic House, she did let some fuckups through.
Still better then Reid the Spineless though.
beltane
Only corrupt, right-wing manly-men you would want to have a beer with are allowed to engage in the womanly art of right-wing pontificating. The rhesus monkeys in the media get upset when sentient humans do it, especially if they are of the female variety.
Kay
@TenguPhule:
I bet, if you asked her, this is what she’s proudest of:
S-CHIP
Not that anyone will ask, because she’s such a crazed harridan and all.
The Moar You Know
Nancy is awesome, plain and simple. You can see how effective she was by the Republican efforts to derail her election as Minority Leader – they are plain and simple still scared shitless of her.
Shame she never got the backup she deserved from the Senate and from Obama, but that was the hand she was dealt and she played it as well as she could anyway.
There are very few politicians who have my admiration. Nancy is one of them.
stuckinred
@Kay: yes!
ruemara
fucking fuckers couldn’t lick Nancy’s mud encrusted pumps.
I have got to quit watching the cspan, but I want to watch the Senate rules vote. But these fuckers are making me furious.
El Cid
Also, never forget that NANCY PELOSI — WENT TO SYRIA! AND WAR A MUSLIM WAR HEADSCARF! LOGAN ACT! LOGAN ACT!*
*That she carried a message from the administration and that Republicans accompanied her is irrelevant.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Nancy Pelosi, who successfully got major legislation through the the nitwit and coward-infected Democratic caucus, who was right about Iraq and most of the major questions of the last decade, who never to my knowledge was touched by a whiff of scandal personal or political, is a leader of questionable effectiveness and judgement (and botox, too also! Oh, that MoDo, what a wit!)
Newt Gingrich, a mean-spirited, willfully ignorant buffoon who ran on platitudes moral and political that even he didn’t believe in, who put corporate lobbyists in charge of writing legislation, who escaped the corruption prosecution that got most of his lieutenants indicted only when he was driven from office for nailing an employee while driving an impeachment he openly admitted (I’ll say that much to his credit) was about sex, and who has been dead wrong when he did actually seem to believe in something, that’s someone who has to be taken seriously as a thinker and presidential candidate.
I don’t count Hastert, ’cause he was just a puppet for Delay, then Rove. Is someone keeping tabs on Boner’s modes of travel as Speaker?
TR
Oh, I love Pelosi.
Sure, she lacked some of the vapid camera-ready charisma we seem to find so essential in politics today, but on some of the more minor, piddling issues — intelligence and determination, leadership of a diverse caucus, effectiveness in getting major legislation passed — she was absolutely great.
Heath Shuler couldn’t lead the fucking Redskins. He can blow his pathetic challenge to her out his ass.
Violet
NANCY SMASH!
Can’t believe I was the first to say it.
kay
@El Cid:
The WSJ put a HUGE picture of her in the scarf on the editorial page.
I took it as fashion advice, El Cid, because I’m shallow. She looked great in that thing.
Paris
is she really the best the Democrats can come up with as their leader
She is the only person I would prefer to see in the Whitehouse.
Jay in Oregon
@stuckinred:
Word. Remember the hue and cry when Hillary Clinton teared up during the election? How dare she let her feeble, womanly emotions show? The terrorists would laugh at the U.S. for letting a weak, emotional woman lead the country!
geg6
I will never forget the day she became Speaker. Never. One of my most proud moments as a woman.
There is no politician today that I admire more than Nancy SMASH. Absolutely no one.
jcgrim
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Excellent!
Suck It Up!
@The Moar You Know:
oh FUCKING please.
Shadow's Mom
I will miss Pelosi as Speaker. Switching between Speaker vote and Senate opening.
It’s not too late to call your senator and ask him/her to support Udall/Klobuchar/Bennett/Gillibrand in their move to change the Senate rules.
Sasha
@aimai:
“We will go through the gate. If the gate is closed, we will go over the fence. If the fence is too high, we will pole vault in. If that doesn’t work, we will parachute in. But we are going to get health care reform passed for the American people for their own personal health and economic security and for the important role that it will play in reducing the deficit.”
PeakVT
Has anyone seen a whip count on rules reform?
JAHILL10
She’s not gone or done, folks. She’s still minority leader, despite a concerted effort by the Repugs, aided by the MSM, to get her removed. And you know why, don’t you? She is one of the best political infighters evah. If the next two years in the House are going to be trench warfare, she is the general I’d want. I think she will have a thing or two to say about this notion of running the entire country from half of one branch of government.
4jkb4ia
She gave him the gavel. It’s done. Very classy speech. Cannot help noticing that everyone stood and clapped. Today everyone gets along and tomorrow they will go back to automatic partisan behavior.
eemom
@4jkb4ia:
This is one of those moments when I really kind of hope the country goes to hell (which is where it’s going anyway). That is what it deserves for wilfully choosing to replace this woman with that stupid, snivelling, drunk-ass corporate whore.
Mike Kay (Chief of Staff)
the corporate dems (the evan bayh types) wanted a competing plan on social security only because that’s what their benefactors
paid forwanted.rikyrah
Nancy Pelosi KICKED ASS.
period.
and she did it in perfectly done hair, makeup, Jimmy Choos and Dior.
she had the fist of steel, and had more balls than 90% of the men serving with her.
Bless you Nancy. Even when I disagreed with you, I thought you kicked ass.
DonkeyKong
I’ll be sending flowers and a thank you card to her office over the weekend. My rep is Barbara Lee, but I’ve called into Mrs. Pelosi’s office a few times to express my support. I suggest others here do the same. Write your favorite NANCY SMASH quote in the card.
Mike Kay (Chief of Staff)
@The Moar You Know: I remember 2007 and 2008 when nancy was public enemy #1 in the blogosphere because she refused to investigate
Hitlerbush, much less impeach him, and she refused to cut off funding for iraq, much less the surge. They even primaried her with Cindy Sheehan.It’s sad the blogosphere only misses her, now that she’s gone.
I love you Nancy. Pragmatists rocks.
asiangrrlMN
I greatly admire Nancy Pelosi. And, I love how she reduces grown men to snivels and sobs.
@aimai: Out of curiosity, I Googled Nancy Pelosi and parts of the quote. I should have just trusted you when you said people were vile about her.
Nancy Pelosi is everything I want in a leader. There was an interesting video on TED by a CEO at Facebook as to why there aren’t more females in positions of leadership in the corporate world. The one part that really struck me is how she talks about how people were given a resume of a person high in ranks. Half were told it was “Heidi Johnson”, and half were told it’s “Hank Johnson” (or something equivalent. The real person is female). The people were asked to evaluate Heidi or Hank as a leader. The ones who got Hank admired him, liked him, wanted to have a beer with him, wanted to work for him, etc. The ones who got Heidi admired her and said she was a great leader, but they weren’t sure they wanted to work for her because she was too aggressive, ambitious, ruthless, etc.
The same general principle is at work with Nancy SMASH! She was better at her job than ninety percent of the men who preceded her. That is unacceptable to the haters.
Yutsano
@asiangrrlMN: She’s an Italian grandmother. You don’t fuck with Italian grandmothers. Especially from Baltimore, which is where she’s originally from. I think she’s in SFO for her husband’s job and got involved in the family business there. Her father would have been fucking proud of her.
Hi hon. Still can’t talk. The Dawg would be laughing his ass off if he saw me like this. Not that he has any trouble shutting me up.
eemom
@Yutsano:
Now that you mention it, this is one reason why I just don’t GET the hatred, even from her political opponents. Cuz even with those balls of steel, in her public speaking she come across as a wise, loving grandmother.
I mean, maybe it’s just me — but how could anyone hate her AND love that godawful screechy-voiced twat from Alaska?*
*other than men who want to fuck the latter, that is — and no, I DON’T want to know who you are.
asiangrrlMN
@Yutsano: I bet the Dawg has no trouble shutting you up. You still at home?
You are right about Nancy being an Italian grandmother and that’s why they hate/fear/revile her so. She has more class and dignity in her pinkie than the rest do in their entire bodies combined.
@eemom: Well, one of the links on the Googley was about how all us Nancy-adoring bitches are askeered of Palin, so who knows?
RalfW
Of course, if you’re a Republican, and vaguely suburban-hot, you only have to be a Fox toady and two term Congresswoman to be bandied about by a major network as a possible presidential candidate (la Bachmann). But pass tons of important legislation (a chunk of which died at the hands of old white men across the hall in the Senate)? And you want to stay in leadership? Ba-ha-ha-ha.
It’s a shitty world.
WaterGirl
@asiangrrlMN: Wow. Just wow, on the resumes with 2 names thing. I am literally shaking my head. That’s just wrong. It would be interesting to know whether the people reading the resumes and reacting that way were women or men.
joe from Lowell
Is the best legislative leader in generations the best Democrats can come up with as their legislative leader?
Uh….yes?
tom p
Nancy P is my kinda “b*tch” (a b*tch is defined as any woman who won’t do what ever any man tells her to do) and she is only my kinda “b*tch” because she is one tuff broad and I will contribute to every campaign she ever runs.
Nancy, are you listening?
SiubhanDuinne
I dreamt about Nancy last night. She was in exact profile and was just about to hand over the gavel to the new WOSOTH. She had a realy nice short haircut and I could tell that tears were *just slightly* gathering in her eyes, but she simply lifted her chin a micrometer higher and never let a tear escape. I remember thinking (in the dream), “Wow, how ballsy and classy.”
I’m sure she’s cried in private, but what a gracious speech she gave today in handing over the gavel. (That *big* gavel, I might add. Couldn’t possibly be any symbolism there.) She’ll be a fine Minority Leader. We definitely haven’t seen the last of The SMASH.
asiangrrlMN
@WaterGirl: I know, right? My guess would be that it’s both. There are plenty of women who think the same way.
@SiubhanDuinne: That’s an awesome dream. I once dreamed of a BJ party. It was…interesting.