Why should they bother?
by Tom Sullivan
“What does Nancy Pelosi think she’s doing?” a friend blurted out last night in the middle of a conversation about something else.
The Netroots Nation conference begins this morning in Philadelphia. The annual gathering of progressive activists from across the country will feature presidential candidates and other national politicians along with nonprofit issues advocacy groups, campaign consultants, campaign tech specialists, political junkies and lowly bloggers. For campaign professionals, it’s a kind of political trade show.
For the rest, Netroots is at once an annual family reunion and a kind of day spa for activists on the edge of burnout and for those hoping to ward off burnout ahead of the next fights. Old friends are stunned to be living through a period in America like this one. They come, if for no other reason, to be surrounded briefly by thousands of like-minded Americans and go home feeling less alone and more empowered to fix what’s wrong.
The conversations are mainly, but not exclusively, political. Naturally, what the hell is going on in Washington, D.C. is at the front of everyone’s mind.
Sarah Jones captures at New York magazine bit of the angst over where Democrats are headed (or not) in the same words my friend used (emphasis mine):
Pelosi’s job, as Speaker in a time during which her party does not control the Senate or the White House, is to protect a Democratic majority in the House. She’s also responsible for helping maximize her party’s chances of defeating Trump. The only legible explanation for her reluctance to investigate Acosta, or censure Trump, is that she fears a backlash that would cost her moderate members their seats. But if that’s the case, she overestimates the risk. Trump is an unpopular president, and the disgraceful events of his tenure mobilized voters and flipped House districts. The forces that elevated insurgents like Ocasio-Cortez, and moderates like Virginia’s Abigail Spanberger, have shared roots: Voters reacted against Trump and demanded change. Now Pelosi seems to believe that she can simply ride 2018’s blue wave through the general election, but there may be consequences to that reticence that she does not expect. If she wants to keep her majority, she has to give people a reason to back her party — and that takes more than passing bills that go to the Senate to die. She has to give voters something to believe in, too. Why should voters give Democrats power they won’t use?
The times demand a more aggressive Democratic Party. Acosta stands accused of violating federal law to give an unrepentant sexual predator a light sentence. If Pelosi won’t even consider his impeachment, then she is complicit in the same culture of impunity allows Trump to prosper.
I have no idea why the Speaker is pursuing the cautious course she is on. Some of it may be generational caution. But securing her majority for another cycle is not enough. Merely defeating Donald Trump is not enough. Trumpism must be repudiated unquestionably. Democrats may be able to accomplish the former by turning out their base. To accomplish the latter, they need to turn out young voters. For that, Democrats need to give them a good reason to turn out.
As the North Carolina chart at the top of this page attests, voters under 40 in this country have the numbers to take power. They just just won’t exercise it like The Squad did just in 2018. Cautious Democrats may have the experience, but what they need to secure victory the country needs is fire driving them. Party veterans are not going to concede power to younger activists who aren’t prepared to exercise their most basic power. Senior Democratic leaders don’t simply need a push. The Squad needs allies to push them.