Pelosi is progressive, pragmatic -- and a fighter

By Debra J. Saunders

I don’t think it was a coincidence that staff who worked for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi sometimes ended up standing in front of me when I attended press events she held in San Francisco, when I worked for a local paper.

Pelosi didn’t seem to like it when I’d pepper her with questions about, say, her ill-considered 2007 visit to Syria, during which she proclaimed, “The road to Damascus is the road to peace.”

She was, after all, used to a press corps that considered her a political moderate in spite of her very progressive voting record and positions. I was not among that group.

It was a San Francisco-based misinterpretation due to Pelosi’s old-school style. A Democratic fundraiser and organizer while she raised her five children, Pelosi resisted entreaties that she run for office until her youngest was in high school. The daughter of Baltimore mayor Thomas D’Alesandro, Pelosi was raised in the ways of the back room. She knows how to cut deals when many Bay Area pols prefer to flaunt their precious sensibilities.

She’s pragmatic to the point that she tried to rein in Democrats who wanted to impeach President George W. Bush because of the war in Iraq.

She also is progressive to the point that she helped usher in President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act, even though its passage helped Republicans pick up 63 House seats in 2010. She won on health care but lost her gavel.

https://www.heraldnet.com/opinion/saunders-pelosi-is-progressive-pragmatic-and-a-fighter/


I usually don't agree with Debra Saunders but this is a little better article by her.