# Speaker of the House 2019 **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [November 9, 2018, 4:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/speaker-of-the-house-2019/824246 "2018-11-09T16:11:47Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Aspenglow](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aspenglow/32/76_2.png) [@Aspenglow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aspenglow)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2018, 4:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/speaker-of-the-house-2019/824246/41 "2018-11-11T04:19:00Z")
> [@Ulf\_the\_Unwashed](#): > > To be fair, it didn’t take them any longer to “dirty up” Barack Obama, Chuck Schumer, Jon Tester, Andrew Gillum, Beto O’Rourke, and a host of others whose chromosomal makeup is somewhat different from the folks on your list :). > > Not to invalidate your point–I’d agree that women have gotten the worst of it–but GOP-strewn mud certainly hasn’t been limited to women. You’re right. They do sure have a lot of female boogeymen, though. > [@Ulf\_the\_Unwashed](#): > > And of course the dirtying up of Wasserman Schultz was accomplished much more effectively by the Bernie Sanders campaign than by anything the GOP did. \ In fairness to Bernie and his supporters, this really tracks back to the Russians. The Bernie folks were understandably angered, on purpose, by the release of the Clinton campaign’s private emails. The Russians meant to divide… and boy, howdy, did they ever get their money’s worth. > [@Richard\_Parker](#): > > You are wrong to think that any of those women has the name recognition and unfavorables of Pelosi, save perhaps Warren. > > You can’t really think that a decade-long campaign spending hundreds of millions of dollars can be replicated overnight. I do actually think it can be replicated overnight. They reach for the smear almost instantly and – up to now, at least – have used it successfully to a dismaying degree. Hell, now they all just start chanting, “Lock her/him up!” and for purposes of their base, it’s automatically a successful smear. Do you believe that fewer of their base despise Maxine Waters than Nancy Pelosi? I’d bet the figure is roughly 35-40% in either instance. They don’t need name recognition. They just have to hear it from the rubbery lips of their messiah. They hate whomever they’re told to hate. I’ll allow it isn’t nearly as effective on independents. My only real issue is that Dems should not let their choice be guided by what Republicans are doing with it. They’re going to do it with everyone. ---
**Author:** ![xenophon41](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xenophon41/32/253_2.png) [@xenophon41](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/xenophon41)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2018, 4:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/speaker-of-the-house-2019/824246/42 "2018-11-11T04:46:30Z")
> [@Aspenglow](#): > > My only real issue is that Dems should not let their choice be guided by what Republicans are doing with it. They’re going to do it with everyone. Absofuckinglutely. > [@General U. S. Grant](#): > > Oh, I am heartily tired of hearing about what Lee is going to do. Some of you always seem to think he is suddenly going to turn a double somersault, and land in our rear and on both of our flanks at the same time. Go back to your command, and try to think what we are going to do ourselves, instead of what Lee is going to do. ---
**Author:** ![suranyi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e36b37/32.png) [@suranyi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/suranyi)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2018, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/speaker-of-the-house-2019/824246/43 "2018-11-11T17:26:48Z")
> [@xenophon41](#): > > Absofuckinglutely. Pelosi herself recently said something to the effect of “You don’t let your opponents pick your leaders.” Which is completely correct. I don’t know whether she should be speaker. I happen to like her a lot, and think she’s very effective. But the choice should be made by Democrats, based on what’s best for Democrats. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2018, 6:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/speaker-of-the-house-2019/824246/44 "2018-11-11T18:38:06Z")
> [@](#): > > Quoth **Richard Parker** : > > You can’t really think that a decade-long campaign spending hundreds of millions of dollars can be replicated overnight. They wouldn’t need to replicate it. They’d just keep on using the one that they already have. Again, it was never a campaign against Pelosi; it was a campaign against the Democratic house leader. Literally nothing would need to be changed except the name. ---
**Author:** ![Saint\_Cad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/saint_cad/32/18907_2.png) [@Saint\_Cad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saint_Cad)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2018, 6:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/speaker-of-the-house-2019/824246/45 "2018-11-11T18:48:50Z")
For those of you asking what mud does Pelosi have on her? Don’t forget she ramrodded ACA through saying “We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it”. WTF?! That is so wrong especially for a legislative leader to say on something that contoversial. I know the Dems can contextualize it and say she didn’t really mean what she said but \*How many Americans take that much effort to research anything? \*As a soundbite alone it really demonizes Pelosi as SOTH. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2018, 7:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/speaker-of-the-house-2019/824246/46 "2018-11-11T19:34:27Z")
> [@Saint\_Cad](#): > > For those of you asking what mud does Pelosi have on her? Don’t forget she ramrodded ACA through saying “We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it”. WTF?! That is so wrong especially for a legislative leader to say on something that contoversial. I know the Dems can contextualize it and say she didn’t really mean what she said but > \*How many Americans take that much effort to research anything? > \*As a soundbite alone it really demonizes Pelosi as SOTH. I’m not sure what practical effect there is supposed to be of having your key strategist covered in mud. So? What happens because she’s not loved? The job of the Speaker is not to be an icon of popularity, it’s to be a down-dirty schemer. ---
**Author:** ![asterion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/4da419/32.png) [@asterion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asterion)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2018, 8:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/speaker-of-the-house-2019/824246/47 "2018-11-11T20:01:18Z")
> [@Aspenglow](#): > > Didn’t work much in this last election, did it? She’s the convenient boogeyman who has lost all her teeth to scare voters into voting for Republicans. > > I have _no_ problem if the younger, slightly more progressive wing of the party want her to leave and make way for a new generation of leadership. I think she understands this, too. She has asked for the gavel for a period of time after the new Congress is sworn in and some time to aid in picking a new more progressive replacement. She gets it. > > My point is, it should be _Democrats_ who decide their leadership, full stop. Not Democrats responding to Republican mudslinging. Look how fast they got rid of Al Franken when they decided he’d be a significant threat to Trump in 2020. Remember, Roger Stone knew all about the impending attacks on Franken before it happened. > > They will smear anyone and fast. We just have to stop buying into it. Franken got forced out because Gillibrand is an opportunist who was gifted a Senate seat and has never done anything with it and saw a chance to bump out a potential competitor in the 2020 primary. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2018, 9:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/speaker-of-the-house-2019/824246/48 "2018-11-11T21:21:07Z")
> [@Bijou\_Drains](#): > > for those that don’t know the speaker legally can be anyone, they don’t have to be a member of the house. That’s why it could be Obama. In theory, but it has never been done. However, do note that Pelosi is possibly the most effective and powerful Democrat and female politician, which is why the GOP hates her and spreads Fake news and etc about her. She is scary good, and we need her. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2018, 9:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/speaker-of-the-house-2019/824246/49 "2018-11-11T21:26:44Z")
> [@pjacks](#): > > Hearing Pelosi on the radio these last couple of days sounded like someone took a microphone into a nursing home and recorded a random grandma jabbering about politics. > > No more Pelosi or any of these other relics in leadership. . Exactly what the GOP wants. > **[The Nancy Pelosi Problem](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/04/the-nancy-pelosi-problem/554048/)** > > The first female speaker of the House has become the most effective congressional leader of modern times—and, not coincidentally, the most vilified. \*These victories led Thomas Mann, who studies Congress at the Brookings Institution, to call Pelosi the “strongest and most effective speaker of modern times.” And even after being relegated to minority leader when Republicans took the House in 2010, she kept winning legislative fights. In the summer of 2015, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and the Republican Party launched a mammoth lobbying campaign to kill Obama’s nuclear agreement with Iran. Pelosi quickly secured the votes to prevent Republicans from overturning the agreement, thus checkmating the deal’s foes. In addition to being a masterful legislative tactician, the 77-year-old Pelosi is, in Politico’s words, “the most successful nonpresidential political fundraiser in U.S. history.” Yet many of her colleagues want her gone. In November 2016, almost a third of House Democrats voted to depose her as leader. Another coup attempt erupted last summer. Why so much discontent with a woman who has proved so good at her job? Maybe because many Democrats think Pelosi’s unpopularity undermines their chances of winning back the House. Why is she so unpopular? Because powerful women politicians usually are. Therein lies the tragedy. Nancy Pelosi does her job about as well as anyone could. But because she’s a woman, she may not be doing it well enough.\* The “strongest and most effective speaker of modern times.” And you want her gone because she’s Old? Or because you have been led into this by the constant Fake news and negative attacks on Nancy by the GOp and the Kremlin? It is very simple- if the GOP gates her and fears her and is working hard to get rid of her- then us Dems need her. Don’t let Trump pick our House leader. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2018, 9:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/speaker-of-the-house-2019/824246/50 "2018-11-11T21:32:23Z")
> [@Richard\_Parker](#): > > I think Pelosi is a good leader. But the Dems should obviously choose someone else. > > The best argument for choosing someone else has nothing to do with her merit. There are lots of good leaders to choose from. It just makes no sense to choose the one with the most (undeserved) political baggage. You’d only do that if you thought that there were no one who could do the job just as well. I don’t think that’s true. And then you have let the GOP hate machine pick our leader for us. That is very foolish. We need to ignore the GOP hate machine and pick the most effective leader- which is Pelosi. The GOP hate machine will simply attack whoever is effective, and then if we pick the one with the least “political baggage” we end up picking the least effective leader, \*exactly like the GOP wants us to do. \* ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2018, 9:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/speaker-of-the-house-2019/824246/51 "2018-11-11T21:37:14Z")
> [@Thing\_Fish](#): > > I don’t really get what people dislike about her. At least in Hillary’s case I know it’s “emails!” and “Benghazi”! What is Pelosi supposed to have done that’s so horrible? She seems like a nice grandmotherly type to me. > Anyway. Whether I understand why or not, her approval rating is -25%. That’s, like, twice as bad as Trump’s. She must go. I have no strong opinion on who should replace her and am open to hearing suggestions … There’s nothing solid. The GOP hate machine has been working hard to get that -25% approval rating, since they fear and hate Pelosi. Basically by picking someone that has a good approval rating, you are picking someone that the GOP does not fear or hate- someone ineffective. If they do have a decent approval rating now, but show themselves to be effective, very soon they will have that same -25% approval rating. If they are ineffective the GOP will allow them to continue. is that what we want? That rating is 100% manufactured by GOP propaganda. We need to ignore those ratings. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2018, 9:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/speaker-of-the-house-2019/824246/52 "2018-11-11T21:38:53Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Pelosi doesn’t have any mud caked on her at all. The leader of the House Democrats is caked in mud. That’s currently Pelosi, yes, but none of the mud is specific to her. Vote in someone else as Speaker, and the Republicans will just cross out the name tag on the mud and write in the new candidate’s name. Yep- unless they are ineffective and a bad leader. ---
**Author:** ![Bijou\_Drains](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bijou_drains/32/2814_2.png) [@Bijou\_Drains](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bijou_Drains)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2018, 9:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/speaker-of-the-house-2019/824246/53 "2018-11-11T21:43:25Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > In theory, but it has never been done. > > However, do note that Pelosi is possibly the most effective and powerful Democrat and female politician, which is why the GOP hates her and spreads Fake news and etc about her. > > She is scary good, and we need her. As I said before she so effective her party lost 63 seats in 2010. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2018, 9:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/speaker-of-the-house-2019/824246/54 "2018-11-11T21:43:26Z")
> [@Aspenglow](#): > > Really? Remind me, please, how long did it take them to dirty up Elizabeth Warren? Maxine Waters? Fredericka Wilson? Debbie Wasserman-Schultz? (Notice anything those people have in common, by the way?) > > I don’t have a problem with picking someone besides Pelosi, but Pelosi has earned her votes each and every term. If she can earn them again, I have no problem with it. And I’m sick of playing on Republicans’ turf, letting them define for Democrats/progressives on what basis they should pick their leadership. Yep, absolutely. With Facebook and etc, it takes only weeks to kill a reputation. And has been shown here, even Democrats are happy to buy into GOP lies. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2018, 9:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/speaker-of-the-house-2019/824246/55 "2018-11-11T21:47:16Z")
> [@Tamerlane](#): > > But to my understanding it is exactly the progressive wing of the Democratic Party that _most_ want her gone. For the Republicans she’s a mixed bag - dangerous in her fund-raising ability( which apparently is second to none ), but also a convenient boogeyman to trot out on the campaign trail. The pragmatic old guard DP leadership goes along with her because of that prodigious fund-raising ability and energizer bunny work ethic. > > It’s the slightly younger, slightly more progressive wing of the party that mostly want her to make way for a new generation of leadership. > **[The Nancy Pelosi Problem](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/04/the-nancy-pelosi-problem/554048/)** > > The first female speaker of the House has become the most effective congressional leader of modern times—and, not coincidentally, the most vilified. \*Within days of pelosi’s ascension to House minority leader, in 2003, back when nearly 60 percent of Americans still had no idea who she was, the Republican Party featured her visage—“garish and twisted,” in the words of a magazine article at the time—in an ad against a Democrat running for Congress in Louisiana. The GOP has been using her as a scarecrow ever since. Before the 2010 midterms, the National Republican Congressional Committee cited Pelosi in an astonishing 70 percent of its ads—far more than the percentage that cited Obama. And for good reason: Internal Republican polling showed that Pelosi was far less popular than the president. After Democrats lost their House majority that fall, Congressman Allen Boyd of Florida, whose reelection bid failed, called hers “the face that defeated us in this last election.” In the run-up to the 2012 elections, according to the Wesleyan Media Project, Republicans invoked Pelosi in television ads seven times as often as they invoked the Senate’s Democratic leader, Harry Reid. Four years after that, in the run-up to 2016, they invoked her three times as often. In the Trump era, as Republican vulnerability has mounted, the GOP has targeted Pelosi yet again. Last summer, when the Democrat Jon Ossoff showed surprising strength in a special election for a House seat in Georgia, Republicans responded with millions of dollars in ads tying him to Pelosi. “Say No to Pelosi’s Yes Man,” a GOP commercial instructed. One piece of Republican mail depicted a laughing Pelosi maneuvering Ossoff like a marionette alongside the words “Now She’s in Control.” Another featured Pelosi ripping off an Ossoff mask. …The Democrats who want Pelosi gone don’t deny her talent. But they say her unpopularity is too heavy a load to bear. “The Republican playbook for the past four election cycles has been very focused, very clear,” Representative Kathleen Rice, a Democrat from New York, insisted after Ossoff’s defeat. “It’s been an attack on our leader. Is it fair? No. Are the attacks accurate? No. But guess what? They work.” Nonpartisan observers agree. …One might think grassroots Democratic enthusiasm for Pelosi would offset her lack of appeal among Republicans and independents. The party, after all, is moving left, where Pelosi has been all along.\* ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2018, 9:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/speaker-of-the-house-2019/824246/56 "2018-11-11T21:51:53Z")
> [@Saint\_Cad](#): > > For those of you asking what mud does Pelosi have on her? Don’t forget she ramrodded ACA through saying “We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it”. WTF?! That is so wrong especially for a legislative leader to say on something that contoversial. I know the Dems can contextualize it and say she didn’t really mean what she said but > \*How many Americans take that much effort to research anything? > \*As a soundbite alone it really demonizes Pelosi as SOTH. Snopes can do the same: > **[Did Nancy Pelosi Say Obamacare Must be Passed to 'Find Out What Is in It'?](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/pelosi-healthcare-pass-the-bill-to-see-what-is-in-it/)** > > A partisan web site quotes the House Minority Leader selectively in order to create a false equivalence with the 2017 Republican health care plan. Pelosi: _"Americans deserve to know what’s in the bill. …We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it, away from the fog of the controversy. "_ ---
**Author:** ![Saint\_Cad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/saint_cad/32/18907_2.png) [@Saint\_Cad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saint_Cad)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2018, 9:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/speaker-of-the-house-2019/824246/57 "2018-11-11T21:54:48Z")
> [@Aspenglow](#): > > Really? Remind me, please, how long did it take them to dirty up Elizabeth Warren? Maxine Waters? Fredericka Wilson? Debbie Wasserman-Schultz? (Notice anything those people have in common, by the way?) > . In all fairness to Pubs, Maxine Waters pretty much dirties up herself without any help. ---
**Author:** ![Richard\_Parker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/35a633/32.png) [@Richard\_Parker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richard_Parker)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2018, 9:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/speaker-of-the-house-2019/824246/58 "2018-11-11T21:54:53Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > They wouldn’t need to replicate it. They’d just keep on using the one that they already have. Again, it was never a campaign against Pelosi; it was a campaign against the Democratic house leader. Literally nothing would need to be changed except the name. That is correct. Which makes it a good idea to change leaders every decade or so, so long as you have other good ones. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2018, 10:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/speaker-of-the-house-2019/824246/59 "2018-11-11T22:15:19Z")
> [@Richard\_Parker](#): > > That is correct. Which makes it a good idea to change leaders every decade or so, so long as you have other good ones. No- that means the opposite. Keep the effective one, no matter what the GOP hate machines does. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2018, 10:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/speaker-of-the-house-2019/824246/60 "2018-11-11T22:49:44Z")
> [@asterion](#): > > Franken got forced out because Gillibrand is an opportunist who was gifted a Senate seat and has never done anything with it and saw a chance to bump out a potential competitor in the 2020 primary. Or maybe because there are tons of progressives like me who think the bar to be a Senator should be high enough that groping (or even faux-groping) and any violation of consent is enough to render one morally unqualified. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/speaker-of-the-house-2019/824246.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/speaker-of-the-house-2019/824246.md?page=4)