Progressive lawmakers, Pelosi is not your friend.
The sooner they realize this, the better.
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It’s been difficult to stomach watching the vast majority of the progressive caucus fold after months of deliberation, handing over their leverage to democratic leadership and voting on the bipartisan infrastructure bill before the reconciliation bill had passed the senate? The supposed justification coming from caucus chair Pramila Jayapal? It boils down to little more than trusting the word of Joe Biden when he said that he’s confident Manchin and Sinema will vote for the bill. In spite of the fact that of course, Manchin gave no such guarantee and made that explicitly clear.
But with all of this discourse surrounding Manchin, Sinema, and Biden, one can’t help considering the fact that it was Pelosi who forced this vote. It was Pelosi who determined the order that the bills would be voted on. It was always going to be the progressives who were made to look like the bad guys for merely holding the already agreed upon line. It was always going to be the progressives who were forced to vote no, as opposed to the conservative democrats. It was always the progressives who were going to have to justify their vote, not the conservatives democrats.
At what point will progressive lawmakers realize that Nancy Pelosi is not their friend, and does not share their goals?
Pelosi was insincere from the very beginning, and I’m not sure how many more times these things need to happen before leadership within the progressive caucus in particular understands it. Is there really a progressive caucus, or merely a handful of actual progressive lawmakers — flawed as they might be — who actually meant what they said, had a line drawn, and were going to hold it whether their colleagues would or not? What does Pramila Jayapal value more: her relationship with democratic leadership who continue to play her like a fiddle, or a base that is rapidly losing faith?
There was a brief moment where it looked as though she could be a future candidate for future speaker of the house, but if the reconciliation bill gets whittled down even more than it was, then Jayapal should absolutely no longer even be chair of the progressive caucus. What has she accomplished with her position? When your blind trust in…
