Nancy
Pelosi, the first female Speaker, is perhaps
the most consequential
House Leader of all time. She patiently
climbed the leadership
ladder, overcoming misogyny, and developed
and honed a reputation of
not bringing a bill up for a vote on the
House floor unless she had
the necessary votes for passage, twice
leading the Democrats to
majority status.
Like
John
Shaft, the
first
mainstream Black action movie hero,
Nancy Pelosi is a bad
mother#*@%
(Shut
your
mouth).
Showing patience and a stern resolve,
she steered President Biden’s
Bipartisan
Infrastructure
Framework
(BIF)
through her divided caucus with
superior guidance, all the while
maintaining a stoic persona.
Pelosi
became
a strong and necessary parent for her
newly minted
Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC)
chair, Rep. Pramila Jayapal
(D-WA), who blocked a BIF
vote for two months because she and her
90+ member CPC wanted BIF
voted on at the same time as Biden’s
Build
Back Better Agenda (BBBA)
social infrastructure legislation, which
included more than three
trillion dollars in new spending.
Jayapal
became
giddy with her newfound power and felt she
could 'muscle'
Democratic Senators, Kyrsten Sinema and
Joe Manchin, whose votes were
necessary to pass any Democratic bills in
the one-vote Senate
majority. The two Senators had been clear
and direct in stating that
they were opposed to the price tag on BBBA
and several of its elements. Manchin and
Sinema negotiated in good
faith with Jayapal only to have her stuff
components back into the
bill after the fact.
President
Biden
and Pelosi pressed Jayapal to help them
get something passed
before the New Jersey and Virginia
gubernatorial and legislative
elections so that the Democratic
majorities could have something to
show their voters. Jayapal and the CPC
stood firm and did nothing. The
Republicans swept Virginia and came
close to toppling New Jersey’s Democratic
governor.
After
that
November 2nd
debacle, Pelosi told Jayapal she would
bring the BIF
bill to the House floor alone, with the BBBA
to follow later, and call for a vote.
Jayapal still said she would
oppose it and that she still had the votes
to do so. Unbeknownst to
Jayapal, Pelosi had already whipped 13
Republican votes as a cushion
against any CPC
defectors and passed the statute easily.
Now
Democrats
must contend with the redistricting maps
being drawn up by
Republicans who presently control
both
state legislative chambers in 32 of the
50 states. With map
drawing and political leverage tilted in
their favor, Republicans are
busily constructing Congressional
districts that will give them a
House majority in 2022, and refining an
educational message to
facilitate the midterm takeover.
The
Republican
strategy is to double-down on critical
race theory (CRT)
which was the point of their educational
spear in the Virginia and
New Jersey elections. They plan to
buttress, if not upstage CRT,
with legislation and advocacy to promote
corporate-owned charter
schools, school vouchers, homeschooling,
school savings accounts, and
the increased funding of religious
schools.
In
the
emerging scenario, the Republican
education schema will attempt
to appeal to ethnic minority parents and
grassroots leaders on the
one hand by peeling off a small share of
public dollars to enable
them to set up their own educational
operations. On the other hand,
Republicans are blaming these same
individuals for all the ills and
shortcomings of K-12 public education (in
their view).
Minorities,
along
with their White colleagues, have
appropriated these choice
dollars for personal benefit while
delivering almost no educational
gains for low-income students of color.
That approach has been
employed in Milwaukee, Philadelphia,
Detroit, and other ethnic
minority cities to siphon off voters of
color to provide the narrow
margins of Republican gubernatorial
victories in blue and purple
states.
The
approach
is the same as is used by the titans of
the
cannabis/marijuana industry who allow
minorities to own and operate
as limited franchisees and to serve as
minority fronts in urban
communities of color while they control
approximately 98 percent of
all hemp businesses. Ethnic minorities'
primary responsibility is to
lobby legislators and/or communities of
color to vote for legislation
legalizing the drug.
Thus,
marijuana
and public education are being marketed in
parallel ways in
ethnic minority communities for the
benefit of their majority
business counterparts. The Republicans are
on to something here as
Democrats appear oblivious to their
machinations. However, the
Republicans have a primary advantage in
that they are overwhelmingly
in lockstep on their political plans from
the school board to the
city council to the county commission to
the state legislature and
federal elected offices.
Republican
victories
and near victories on November 2nd
have emboldened their efforts at winning
back the majority, while the
Democrats still lack a coherent and
galvanizing message to convey to
their base voters and Independents.
What
is
even more disconcerting is that Rep. Sean
Patrick Maloney (D-NY),
chair of the Democratic Congressional
Campaign Committee (DCCC)
recently stated that it is President
Biden’s primary
responsibility to get the Democratic
message out while Maloney
controls tens of millions of dollars in
campaign funds for the 2022
midterms.
Would
it
not make sense for Maloney, Jayapal, the
Democratic National
Committee Chair, Jaime Harrison, and other
Democratic leaders to
frame a collective message by polling
Democratic voters to determine
what their concerns and interests are?
The
Republicans
are doing all the above and are
successfully targeting
their messaging to stoke their voter
turnout. Given the current rate
of their uninspiring political organizing
and lack of message
development, Democrats seem to be aiding
and abetting a 2022
Republican takeover of the federal
government, except for the
presidency, which if they continue in this
vein, may follow in 2024.
