Pierce: Nancy Pelosi Will Not Sit Down

There is a reason why Nancy Pelosi is Target A now that Hillary Rodham Clinton has left the scene. (The Purity Left isn’t fond of her, either, but that’s a different kettle of neuroses.) She is by far the most effective Democratic legislative leader since Lyndon Johnson. She has managed to hold her caucus together against a Republican majority with more than a few screws loose, and a Speaker who has the same control over his membership as a flea does over the St. Bernard it’s riding. On Thursday, however, she decided to fly solo. She stepped in where the Democratic Senate minority fears to tread, and spent more than five hours speaking on the floor of the House of Representatives, reading the life stories of some DACA recipients as a way of demanding that their concerns not be sacrificed for the sake of coming to some sort of budget compromise.

The Senate has agreed on a bipartisan spending plan that would fund the government for the next two years and raise the debt ceiling. It takes no action on DACA whatsoever. (Apparently, we’re all still depending on the good faith of Mitch McConnell.) Thanks to Mr. Madison’s grand design, the House has to agree to any such plan. Ms. Pelosi does not agree. So, she got up at 10 Wednesday morning and she was still going by early evening. And she was using everything she knows about the rules of the House to do so. That is a very formidable arsenal.

As far as anyone can tell, no House leader ever has done this before, so the dagger of Fck The Political Norms finally been turned in the other directions. (At the very least, Merrick Garland could get a giggle out of this.) She seems to have the support of her caucus; according to reports, she told Democrats in attendance that they could go listen to a presentation by former Vice President Joe Biden and they told her they’d rather listen to her....

But Pelosi has been around long enough to know that “bipartisanship” isn’t the magic spell it often is made out to be, and she thinks quite sensibly that Mitch McConnell’s word is not to be trusted, and that, if you’re going to sell someone out based on that worthless currency, you should know who they are. She was still going at five o’clock. She still had stories to tell.

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