Pelosi and Obama

It's true that the "catfight" subtext Jay Newton-Small is trying to tease out of George Miller's decision to endorse Barack Obama seems pretty dubious. That said, it really is true that Rep. Miller is very close to Nancy Pelosi and almost certainly wouldn't do something like that without Pelosi's approval.

That said, it seems to me that the correct speculation here is that Pelosi doesn't want a president who's so close to Rahm Emanuel. Emanuel is one of Pelosi's main rivals for power in the House, was a former aide to Bill Clinton, and endorsed Hillary in the primary even though it's a major breach of political protocol to go against a home state candidate. Pelosi has, in short, perfectly good reasons to want Clinton to lose that have nothing to do with undue fear of ovaries.

Comments

Could it be that she thinks Obama is the best candidate for the country, not to mention the House? Maybe? Is that even a remote possibility???

Posted by cms | January 11, 2008 12:21 PM

I suppose "so close to Rahm Emanuel" is as good an example of what's wrong with Clinton as any.

Posted by Gary Sugar | January 11, 2008 12:25 PM

Wouldn't Emanuel go back to the White House if Clinton wins though?

Posted by Ron | January 11, 2008 12:32 PM

No cms that is actually pretty doubtful because Obama is not even close to the best candidate so it has to be the back room politicking answer that MY is postulating. Sorry.

Posted by Steady | January 11, 2008 12:32 PM

Does this mean Pelosi will deliver him California?

Posted by Wonderman | January 11, 2008 12:37 PM

Rahm Emanuel & Robert Downey Jr.

Separated at Birth?

Posted by lampwick | January 11, 2008 12:44 PM

Matt, what evidence do you have to say that Rahm endorses Clinton? I thought he was staying out of it b/c he is close to both. His name is not on the official Clinton list of endorsements
http://hillaryclinton.com/news/endorsements/

Posted by pt | January 11, 2008 12:56 PM

Rahm is an idiot. I'm pretty thoroughly annoyed at Pelosi by now as well, but if she can deliver votes to Obama and undermine Clinton I'm all for it.

Posted by itsbenj | January 11, 2008 1:02 PM

it took me 5 seconds on google to turn up:

http://votehillary.org/CMS/node/383

Posted by dbt | January 11, 2008 1:03 PM

On the other hand, that's before Obama declared... and supposedly last january Rahm was going to endorse Hillary but the only sourcing on that was a speculative Novak column.

Posted by dbt | January 11, 2008 1:05 PM

dbt, that's exactly right. The video was from April 2006, almost 8 months before BO declared. Since then, to the best of my knowledge, emanuel has remained strictly neutral. But perhaps Matt has evidence from the fact checking of his own post :)

Posted by pt | January 11, 2008 1:09 PM

that blurb from 'drafthillary.com' is NOT an endorsement. and endorsement is when a politician makes a speech on their own specifically to say "I endorse this person", it doesn't mean saying nice things about someone on a talk show.

Posted by onceler | January 11, 2008 1:16 PM

Doesn't it occur to anyone that another Clinton presidency could spell disaster for Democrats in congress? Have we all forgotten the biggest failure of Bill Clinton's presidencey - the disastrous loss of house and senate for the first time in 40 years, a direct result of the partisan gaming the Clintons played then, and seem intent on continuiing now. Hillary's chance of actually enacting "change" depends on congress remaining in the hands of Democrats. If she polarizes Republicans and the country chooses divided government again, say goodbye to any hope of theat. Obama, on the other hand, seems much more adept at working both sides of the aisle, and not creating the kind of partisan fury on the right which stalemates any productive change. Nancy Pelosi probably knows all this, because she lived through it before, and wants to avoid it again.

Posted by Conradg | January 11, 2008 1:20 PM

Ovarian or not, those don't seem like "perfectly good" reasons to me.

Posted by aleks | January 11, 2008 1:21 PM

The key point here is that it appears that matt's premise-- that emanuel endorsed Clinton-- is simply not true, in which case the rest of his argument about Pelosi's motivations falls apart.

Posted by pt | January 11, 2008 1:26 PM

Conradg, come on. It's obviously true that in the early 1990s the Clintons were in over their heads on the political gamesmanship front ... but that's because the Republicans specialized in political gamesmanship. It wasn't the Clintons' polarization that led to the loss of Congress; it was the Republicans' polarization!

This is the one line more than any other that really pisses me off. So let's be very clear about it: Obama's "skill" at playing both sides of the aisle is admirable, but you know who else had that skill? Bill Clinton! The reason it didn't work then is the same reason it won't work now: the Republican caucus is extraordinarily adept at killing anything that's a victory for a Democratic political star.

There's a reason they circulated a memo telling people not to work with Ted Kennedy, who despite his reputation makes repeated overtures to bipartisan cooperation. No, the Republicans have long been great at intentionally ramming partisanship down Democrats' throat, and every Democratic effort at good-faith cross-aisle cooperation is met with a polite "no thank you" in person followed by a media blitz of blame for the Democrats' leftiness, to the point that the only way to get any cooperation is to go way too far to the right.

So stop blaming the Clintons for polarizing the 1990s; after all, their approval ratings ended up pretty fucking high by the end of things.

Posted by jhupp | January 11, 2008 1:27 PM

That said, it really is true that Rep. Miller is very close to Nancy Pelosi and almost certainly wouldn't do something like that without Pelosi's approval.

I'd like to know what evidence you actually have for that, Matt. Not that Miller and Pelosi are close, but that Pelosi controls him to the extent that he wouldn't make a Presidential endorsement without her approval. I'm guessing the answer is: none. It really sounds like one of those observations that someone makes when they want to sound wise about the ways of Washington. I'd be happy to stand corrected.

Posted by Glenn | January 11, 2008 1:30 PM

That said, it really is true that Rep. Miller is very close to Nancy Pelosi and almost certainly wouldn't do something like that without Pelosi's approval.

There's different kinds of approval. There's the "Sure, I can work with either in the White House and certainly don't have any objections to your making an endorsement of the one you prefer." And then there' the "Yeah, I really want to see Clinton lose, so, please, go for it and the sooner the better."

Posted by Jasper | January 11, 2008 1:32 PM

1) There's a war going on in the Democratic Pary between the whores for the Israel Lobby -- and those who think the Democratic Party should look out for the interests of it's American constituents.

2) Nancy Pelosi helped put Howard Dean in as Chairman of the Democratic National Committee --after billionaire S Daniel Abraham blew Dean's campaign out of the water because Dean said the US should be evenhanded in the Israel-Palestinian issue.

3) Nancy Pelosi kicked the Israel Lobby in the balls when she tossed Jane Harman out as Chairwoman of the House Intelligence Committee. Harman , you may recall, has stated that she takes her direction from Israeli billionaire Haim Saban's think tank for Middle East Policy.

Given that Saban thinks George W was "good for Israel" --i.e., took out Israel's enemy Saddam Hussein -- the reason why Jane Harman did not question George W Bush's "Iraqi Intelligence" is left as an exercise for the reader. Nancy Pelosi, by contrast, joined Senator Bob Graham in warning us that there was no intelligence showing that Hussein was an imminent threat.

4) When Nancy Pelosi canned Harman, that fucking little weasel Ken Baer --Joe Lieberman's boy -- suggested the action was due to personal animus and that the message from Pelosi was "settling of scores is more important than your [US National ] security".
See http://www.tpmcafe.com/blog/coffeehouse/2006/nov/14/intelligent_design

5) A disgusting lie --given that cocksucking whores like Baer are the ones who have greatly damaged US security via their desire to protect Israel with the lives of thousands of US soldiers.

6) I don't think Nancy Pelosi sees Rahm Emanuel as a "political rival" -- I think she sees Rahm as someone who enjoys the privileges of US citizenship and who is a Member of the US Congress -- and yet someone whose loyalties led him to serve as a volunteer for Israel's army during the Gulf War.
Ref: http://www.jewishjournal.com/home/print.php?id=9902

Rahm Emanuel, by contrast, has not served in the US military but has been awfully free with the lives of American soldiers.

Posted by Don Williams | January 11, 2008 1:46 PM

This is as simple as the infighting of the DLC and the DNC. Emanuel is DLC, Pelosi not. Clinton is DLC, the others not.

Different philosophies about getting elected and governing.

Pelosi is a pragmatist and a lifelong politician. She probably sees what the rest of us see that there is something afoot in the country with the change mantra. She wants to expand her power just as any other pol leader does and understands she isn't as likely to get that with the old school folks.

For those of you who think the Clinton's aren't responsible for the polarization of yesterday, it doesn't matter who instigated it, they were always in the middle of it.

If we want to go back to that, if we want to reenergize those you blame for all that, vote for Clinton. You will be assured of your wish.

It goes to electability and once there being able to get ANYTHING done. The Reps will have the easiest fight against HRC than any other candidate and they most assuredly will push that if she gets elected we MUST vote in a Rep Congress majority to counter her.

May not be fair, but it is what it is.

Posted by G Davis | January 11, 2008 1:54 PM

Rahm Emanuel , by the way , was NOT merely a "Clinton aide" -- he was the one who raised shitloads of money for Bill Clinton in 1992.

See the Washington Post's July 1992 article "Clinton's Lean Green Machine".
Or the JewishJournal article cited in the preceeding post.

Today, he controls one of the Democratic Party's 3 big pots of money --the DCCC. Which, last time I checked, had more money than Howard Dean's DNC pot.

A Oct 2006 article in Counterpunch explained how
Rahm Emanuel used that pot of money to put PRO-WAR Democrats in --and to keep Anti-War Democrats out of Congress. See "The Fix is Already In" at
http://www.counterpunch.org/walsh10142006.html

Posted by Don Williams | January 11, 2008 2:02 PM

Reading WAAAAAAY too much into this. George Miller endorsed Bill Bradley for President in 2000. Despite the fact that few off the hill had heard of him before 2006, Miller had a long and establsihed rep on his own, outside of Pelosi's

So, here's my question? Is it really that odd that a member of Congress who endorsed Bradley against Clinton's VP would endorse Obama against Clinton's wife?

Posted by Just an Apikores | January 11, 2008 2:25 PM

Conradg, although the House had indeed been Dem for the 40 years prior to 1994, the Senate had been GOP controlled at least once that I can remember, in the 1980s with Howard Baker as Majority Leader.

Generally sympathize with you, though.

Posted by heh | January 11, 2008 2:38 PM

I have to agree with Glenn and Jasper here-- you are verging dangerously into "punditland" (Swampland?), with your factual assertion about Miller and Pelosi. At best you are working off Hill gossip (or perhaps you'd prefer "conventional wisdom"), which certainly isn't your strong suit. You could write the post without that sentence, and it would still be not much more than meaningless speculation, but at least it wouldn't come off as desperately-trying-to-be-insiderish gossip.

Posted by Doh | January 11, 2008 2:48 PM

I thought that was Nancy Pelosi introducing Obama at the Jefferson-Jackson dinner as "the next President of the United States".

Posted by Duane | January 11, 2008 3:21 PM

Matt, you don't do yourself any favors by not adding a correction to the effect that Emanuel has not endorsed Clinton.

Posted by pt | January 11, 2008 5:03 PM

Did I miss this? I don't think Rahm has decided. In fact I think he is dreading this one and both camps have given him a pass. Pelosi, Dean, and Reid do not have to worry about picking, they have a legitimate reason to stay above the fray. Their surrogates, brothers, children, etc. also seem to have been given free reign. I think you read too much into this. But you might really want to post a correction on the Rahm story, unless you have a scoop.

Posted by JC | January 12, 2008 1:46 AM

"Reading WAAAAAAY too much into this. George Miller endorsed Bill Bradley for President in 2000. Despite the fact that few off the hill had heard of him before 2006, Miller had a long and establsihed rep on his own, outside of Pelosi's

Posted by Just an Apikores | January 11, 2008 2:25 PM"

True, but then again, in 2000 Pelosi wasn't Speaker of the House.

Posted by Reality Man | January 12, 2008 1:53 AM