Nancy Pelosi Feels the Bern, Faces Pro-Sanders Primary ChallengerHouse Minority Leader is 'really out of touch'
By Michael Sainato • 04/30/17 7:55am
 House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
More than any other Democrat currently holding elected office, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi embodies how out of touch Democratic Party leadership is with voters. Under Pelosi, Democrats lost more than 60 seats in the House of Representatives from 2008 to 2016, and her tenure represents just how corrupt the Party has become.
Following Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential election loss, Bernie Sanders‘ supporters scoffed at Pelosi’s re-election as House Minority Leader. Democrats had abandoned all hope of party reform, and Pelosi made it clear that the Party wouldn’t do much to reverse the drastic losses suffered throughout the Obama Administration. At a private, three day conference with billionaire donors, Pelosi doubled-down on developing Party strategy—without any input from voters.
In a December 2016 interview, Pelosi confirmed she would preserve the status quo, claiming “I don’t think people want a new direction.” At at a CNN Town Hall in February 2017, she again revealed her disdain for progressives, telling a millennial Sanders supporter who asked if the Democratic Party would embrace Sanders’ populist message: “Well, I thank you for your question, but I have to say we’re capitalists—that’s just the way it is.” Pelosi then embarked on a tone-deaf rant, arguing that the solution was to make billionaires and millionaires more empathetic. “We have to change the thinking of people,” she said. “The free market is a place that can do good things.”
Pelosi’s attitude has incited Sanders supporters to recruit progressive candidates to challenge establishment Democrats in their primary elections. Nancy Pelosi’s challenger, employment attorney Stephen Jaffe, recently launched his campaign.
“Two words: Bernie Sanders,” Jaffe said in an interview with the Observer when asked why he was running for Congress. “My goal is to try to pull the Democratic Party away from the establishment, corporations, big money, big oil, big pharma, and return it to the people.” |
