Nancy Pelosi Is Good at Her Job and She Should Keep It.
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/03/nancy-pelosi-is-good-at-her-job-and-she-should-keep-it.htmlMarch 16, 2018 11:50 am
Nancy Pelosi Is Good at Her Job and She Should Keep It.
By Jonathan Chait
snip//
Would a different Democratic leader prove less of a liability? Probably for a while, yes. Republicans have spent years building up Pelosi as a hate figure, and a newer and less familiar Democratic leader would take longer for Republicans to promote as a target of fear and loathing. It’s also possible that a Democrat who was either from a less famously progressive locale than San Francisco, or not female, would be less threatening to some socially conservative voters. (The latter point is the most fraught: Do Democrats really want to let irrational fear of powerful women dictate their choice of leaders?) It is true, though, that deposing Pelosi would have at least a temporary messaging benefit in some tough districts this fall.
But the cost of throwing Pelosi over the side would be high. She has been an extraordinarily effective caucus leader. When last held the majority, she shepherded into law the most aggressive spate of liberal reforms since the Great Society: an $800 billion fiscal stimulus, health-care reform, Dodd-Frank. The House passed a cap and trade law at a time when bipartisan support for the idea still had some life in the Senate.
It might seem tempting to dismiss these feats as automatic, the baseline expectation for what a leader can do when her party commands a majority. It is not. During many of these fights, Democrats were wandering off in multiple directions, as Democrats are wont to do. In particular, after Republican Scott Brown won a special election in Massachusetts in January 2010, many if not most Democrats collapsed into despair. Pelosi kept her nerve, talked her party off the ledge, and passed a bill that was signed into law.
If you want a picture of what the ineffective marshaling of a majority looks like, remember the repeated instances in which John Boehner tried to bring bills to the floor only to suffer humiliating defeats. Having a leader who can figure out which bills can get 218 votes is not something to take for granted.
Pelosi’s Democratic critics include both the left and right flanks of the party (which is itself a sign that she occupies its center). Attacks on her leadership try to simultaneously attack her as too moderate and too liberal, in an attempt to cobble together both irreconcilable strands. In part to cover up the incoherence of the criticism, the complaint is often expressed in vague generational terms. She is too old, and ought to give way to the new generation. (Whether this new generation will be more moderate or more liberal is a question that can be filled in as one desires.)
Yet there is zero sign Pelosi’s age has impeded her work. She has not lost her persuasive talents: Pelosi effectively rallied the party to unanimously oppose the Trump tax cuts. If some Democrats had supported the measure, Republicans could have touted its bipartisan nature, which would in turn help reduce its unpopularity. Instead the health care and tax cuts have been a millstone around Republican necks. (Republicans initially tried attacking Conor Lamb for opposing the tax cuts, but abandoned that message, a telling concession in a heavily Republican district.) Last month, Pelosi delivered an eight-hour speech defending the Dreamers, standing the entire time, in heels, without a break, a feat of stamina I could not have matched at any point in my life. It may have been a stunt to display her vitality, but it was a convincing one.
Replacing Pelosi as leader would create the ephemeral benefit of forcing Republicans to rotate in a new cast of villains to star in their attack ads — MS-13? hippies? antifa? — until they could build up the name-ID for her successor. It would bring the significant downside of firing an elected official who is extremely good at her extremely important job.
= new reply since forum marked as read
with brains, accomplishments, and/or effective leadership skills still have to deal with. It’s really a shame.
Dammit! It’s so damn discouraging sometimes! Every time I’m tempted to think we’ve come a long way, or we’ve pulled ourselves out of the muck of ignorance and idiocy and grown up a little, I see myself proven wrong. I had the same hopes for America when Barack Obama’s was elected President. How far we’vecome How America has grown up, turned a page, closed a shameful chapter in our history, gotten OVER IT. And Man-oh-man was I ever wrong.
So discouraging and disheartening. We haven’t grown up, as a nation. We haven’t grown out of it or gotten over it or moved past it. We’re NOT there. We’re not only not there, we’re nowhere near there. SMH
exceptional leaders to the curb.
Nancy Pelosi 
This "Pelosi must stand down/step aside" nonsense needs to be shut down hard. To me, somebody is using this to try to stir things up among the Democratic Party in advance of the 2018 midterms. Of course, if the House Democratic Caucus wants to have a discussion about it when they vote for a new (hopefully, majority) leader in the next Congress and want to put up a new candidate for leadership to challenge her, that's their prerogative but, under no circumstances, should anybody BUT Nancy Pelosi make the decision for her to voluntarily step down/stand aside as leader and certainly NOT for some of the bogus reasons we've been hearing recently.
It is however, a consistent argument against her used by far too many people who are unable to support their premise with objective evidence. 
I quite certain though, your concern against ageism has also been consistent, and all we need do is review previous discussions in regards to her run to see this inclination of yours illustrated.
... you can excuse me for calling him a ..."
"Well, I'm a woman so excuse me for calling her a ...."
If you choose to disagree with their ideas, then you're on the right track.
but given a choice between ideology and a ... census demographic, shall we say ...
... I'll roll with ideas I agree with and believe in every single time. Pelosi simply hasn't demonstrated much that I can agree with over the course of her tenure. She gives lip service to support of the DREAMers, to use one recent example, but can't seem to manage getting that support legislated. This squanders all the goodwill she built up from her filibuster last month.
While House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and other Democratic leaders had hinged their support for last month’s budget caps deal on a commitment from Republicans to consider legislation salvaging the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, they’ve signaled they won’t hold a similar line heading into next week’s expected vote on an omnibus spending bill.
http://thehill.com/homenews/house/378881-democratic-leaders-pull-back-hard-line-immigration-demand
Why, I'm so old I remember when she took impeachment of W Bush off the table.
And maybe you remember when she suggested to Barack Obama in 2008 that he pick Chet Edwards as his running mate. I certainly do.
Don't get me wrong; she's done a lot of good over the years, but maybe it's time for someone else to take the lead. (This is much more in disagreement with the OP's link than it is with you.)
