The Unraveling Begins?
November 18, 2006
Guest Columnist
By THOMAS B. EDSALL
Washington
Toward the end of Thomas D’Alesandro Jr.’s third term as mayor of Baltimore in the late 1950’s, when his daughter Nancy (to become Nancy Pelosi) was a teenager, The Baltimore Sun got a tip. The mayor was spending $25,000 in taxpayer money, enough to buy three row houses, to renovate his office. The Sun editor ordered a reporter, Frank Somerville, to City Hall to demand an explanation.
“Mr. Mayor,” Somerville said, “my desk wants me to ask you why you are spending so much money on your office.” D’Alesandro leaned over and put his ear to his desk. “My desk,” the mayor responded, “tells your desk to [expletive]!” The story became part of the D’Alesandro legend. The mayor had once again thumbed his nose at the Baltimore establishment, much to the delight of the city’s voters.
Since D’Alesandro’s day, the Democratic Party has become increasingly fractious. In the North, the center-left coalition is no longer an alliance of the ascendant — of unions reaching membership peaks, of white ethnic voters pushing into the middle class, of Catholic, Jewish and black entrepreneurs wresting control of construction companies, banks and brokerages from an Anglo-Saxon Protestant elite.
In 2006, Nancy D’Alesandro Pelosi’s Democratic Party is bifurcated, dominated by an educated, secular, socially liberal elite. This wing, between 35 and 40 percent of the Democratic electorate, has placed its top priority on cultural issues, especially abortion rights and sexual privacy. These upscale voters are joined in a fragile alliance with the majority (60 to 65 percent) of Democratic voters who are disproportionately poor, African-American or Hispanic, and in grave need of material assistance. This uneasy alliance — of those who have made it and those who have not — must compete with Republicans for such overlapping constituencies as exurbanites; newly affluent Asian-Americans and Hispanics; and patriotic, socially centrist, mostly white voters.
As speaker, Pelosi, 66, has the obligation to produce results from a caucus that embodies the Democratic Party’s racial, regional and ideological conflicts — conflicts that for three decades have brought the party to a legislative standstill. Strikingly liberal African-Americans have used seniority to win control of at least four committee chairs and one top leadership post, after an election in which Democratic victory was crucially dependent on a surge of moderate voters, particularly white men, defecting from the G.O.P. Having pledged both fiscal austerity and new spending on middle-class benefits, including broadened access to health care, Democrats face irreconcilable demands in a zero-sum game.
House Democrats won with the backing of wary constituencies opposed to the war and disgusted with Republican corruption and hypocrisy on sex (e.g. Mark Foley). These voters have not developed a newfound faith in the Democratic Party.
Operating in a hotly contested environment, Pelosi forgot a cardinal rule of politics, true now as in her father’s day: If you are going to challenge a competitor, whether it is the local newspaper or a major player in the House hierarchy, you’d better win. Pelosi tried to shove aside her second in command, Steny Hoyer of Maryland, and elevate Jack Murtha of Pennsylvania, a high-profile critic of the Iraq war, to majority leader. Murtha, who dismissed the pending Democratic ethics package as “total crap,” is a politician far more in the mold of Pelosi’s father than the prissy Hoyer. In an environment shaped by the Republican ethics quagmire, Pelosi got rolled, 149 to 86. The broader danger for Democrats who have barely emerged from the abyss: defeat breeds enemies and weakens alliances.
Pelosi’s first failure comes at a critical juncture. To line up votes for Murtha, she made promises, many of which will not be kept because Hoyer will demand his share of the spoils. Pelosi revealed that she is not in control of her own caucus, much less the full House. She knows this, as her agonizingly forced smile demonstrated when she went before television cameras on Thursday. Republicans also know this. After his election yesterday as Republican whip, Roy Blunt of Missouri declared: “One hundred forty-nine Democrats demonstrated yesterday that they are willing to buck Nancy Pelosi. We’ll work each day to give those Democrats a viable alternative.”
Pelosi is resilient. She quotes her father: “Throw a punch, take a punch.” But back in 1993, after President Bill Clinton suffered the first of many defeats at the hands of Republicans, Representative George Miller of California — who would later act as Pelosi’s top lieutenant in her bid to make Murtha majority leader — was prophetic about the consequences of an early loss. “Historically, once things start to unravel around this place, it’s very difficult,” he said. “There’s very real potential for damage here.”
----
Thomas B. Edsall holds the Joseph Pulitzer II and Edith Pulitzer Moore Chair in National Affairs Journalism at Columbia University, and is the author, most recently, of Building Red America. He will be a guest columnist this month.
Guest Columnist
By THOMAS B. EDSALL
Washington
Toward the end of Thomas D’Alesandro Jr.’s third term as mayor of Baltimore in the late 1950’s, when his daughter Nancy (to become Nancy Pelosi) was a teenager, The Baltimore Sun got a tip. The mayor was spending $25,000 in taxpayer money, enough to buy three row houses, to renovate his office. The Sun editor ordered a reporter, Frank Somerville, to City Hall to demand an explanation.
“Mr. Mayor,” Somerville said, “my desk wants me to ask you why you are spending so much money on your office.” D’Alesandro leaned over and put his ear to his desk. “My desk,” the mayor responded, “tells your desk to [expletive]!” The story became part of the D’Alesandro legend. The mayor had once again thumbed his nose at the Baltimore establishment, much to the delight of the city’s voters.
Since D’Alesandro’s day, the Democratic Party has become increasingly fractious. In the North, the center-left coalition is no longer an alliance of the ascendant — of unions reaching membership peaks, of white ethnic voters pushing into the middle class, of Catholic, Jewish and black entrepreneurs wresting control of construction companies, banks and brokerages from an Anglo-Saxon Protestant elite.
In 2006, Nancy D’Alesandro Pelosi’s Democratic Party is bifurcated, dominated by an educated, secular, socially liberal elite. This wing, between 35 and 40 percent of the Democratic electorate, has placed its top priority on cultural issues, especially abortion rights and sexual privacy. These upscale voters are joined in a fragile alliance with the majority (60 to 65 percent) of Democratic voters who are disproportionately poor, African-American or Hispanic, and in grave need of material assistance. This uneasy alliance — of those who have made it and those who have not — must compete with Republicans for such overlapping constituencies as exurbanites; newly affluent Asian-Americans and Hispanics; and patriotic, socially centrist, mostly white voters.
As speaker, Pelosi, 66, has the obligation to produce results from a caucus that embodies the Democratic Party’s racial, regional and ideological conflicts — conflicts that for three decades have brought the party to a legislative standstill. Strikingly liberal African-Americans have used seniority to win control of at least four committee chairs and one top leadership post, after an election in which Democratic victory was crucially dependent on a surge of moderate voters, particularly white men, defecting from the G.O.P. Having pledged both fiscal austerity and new spending on middle-class benefits, including broadened access to health care, Democrats face irreconcilable demands in a zero-sum game.
House Democrats won with the backing of wary constituencies opposed to the war and disgusted with Republican corruption and hypocrisy on sex (e.g. Mark Foley). These voters have not developed a newfound faith in the Democratic Party.
Operating in a hotly contested environment, Pelosi forgot a cardinal rule of politics, true now as in her father’s day: If you are going to challenge a competitor, whether it is the local newspaper or a major player in the House hierarchy, you’d better win. Pelosi tried to shove aside her second in command, Steny Hoyer of Maryland, and elevate Jack Murtha of Pennsylvania, a high-profile critic of the Iraq war, to majority leader. Murtha, who dismissed the pending Democratic ethics package as “total crap,” is a politician far more in the mold of Pelosi’s father than the prissy Hoyer. In an environment shaped by the Republican ethics quagmire, Pelosi got rolled, 149 to 86. The broader danger for Democrats who have barely emerged from the abyss: defeat breeds enemies and weakens alliances.
Pelosi’s first failure comes at a critical juncture. To line up votes for Murtha, she made promises, many of which will not be kept because Hoyer will demand his share of the spoils. Pelosi revealed that she is not in control of her own caucus, much less the full House. She knows this, as her agonizingly forced smile demonstrated when she went before television cameras on Thursday. Republicans also know this. After his election yesterday as Republican whip, Roy Blunt of Missouri declared: “One hundred forty-nine Democrats demonstrated yesterday that they are willing to buck Nancy Pelosi. We’ll work each day to give those Democrats a viable alternative.”
Pelosi is resilient. She quotes her father: “Throw a punch, take a punch.” But back in 1993, after President Bill Clinton suffered the first of many defeats at the hands of Republicans, Representative George Miller of California — who would later act as Pelosi’s top lieutenant in her bid to make Murtha majority leader — was prophetic about the consequences of an early loss. “Historically, once things start to unravel around this place, it’s very difficult,” he said. “There’s very real potential for damage here.”
----
Thomas B. Edsall holds the Joseph Pulitzer II and Edith Pulitzer Moore Chair in National Affairs Journalism at Columbia University, and is the author, most recently, of Building Red America. He will be a guest columnist this month.
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