Pelosi-stein

The Nancy Monster.../Lawrence/Counterpunch

""Two years ago, when Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton was refusing to bow out quietly, her New York Senate colleague Chuck Schumer did a masterful job of gently coaxing the temperamental doyenne to the sidelines. Now, another high-profile Democrat-who-would-be-Queen needs a polite nudge - or perhaps a rude shove - from the national limelight. Sadly for everyone - except Republicans, that is - she's still got her gavel, and is threatening to pummel anyone who comes near.

I'm talking about Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. Or rather ex-Speaker Nancy Pelosi, thanks to the drubbing the Democrats took in last week’s mid-terms owing to Pelosi's stubborn and determined - but ultimately self-destructive - leadership of the party since Obama took office. As the darling of California’s hyper-liberal 8th congressional district, Pelosi had no problem retaining her own House seat, which was never in danger to begin with. But dozens of her fellow Democrats in “Ordinary America” – those ghastly places where commoners still “cling bitterly to their guns and religion” – went up in flames. And dozens more could suffer the same fate in 2012 if Pelosi wins her bid to become the House minority leader, which is all but assured, since the more conservative Blue Dog base of her leading rival, Steny Hoyer, the current minority leader, has just decimated.""

Bay Area DINOcrats are to authentic Democratic principles (i.e. Woodrow Wilson, FDR, Truman, JFK...) as Stalinism was to Karl Marx.

""Some pro-Pelosi sycophants think it's unfair to blame her for the Democrats' election losses. Are they kidding? It was she, more than anyone else, who pushed the party to over-reach the Obama presidential mandate with policies - to say nothing of a governing style - that was bound to alienate the independent white voters that Obama had so brilliantly captured for the party in 2008. She derided a more moderate incremental strategy on health care reform - dubbing it "Skinny Care" - and arrogantly demanded that the party line up behind the bloated, deficit-inducing version that everyone from former President Bill Clinton to White House chief of staff Rahm Emmanuel warned her would backfire.

And when it did, with a full-scale revolt from voters in the summer of 2009, which soon morphed into the Tea Party movement, and other morbid symptoms of political decay, Pelosi's reaction wasn't just more of the same - it was full-steam ahead."""