[ad_1]
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – This is Nancy Pelosi:
Republicans are once again launching advertisements against you, turning your face into a monster mask of a San Francisco Liberal spending lavishly on amnesty. Democrat candidates are stepping down from your leadership, declaring that it's time for a new generation in Washington, while welcoming Joe Biden's encouragement, which has lasted for nearly two decades.
David Hogg, the rugged face of Parkland's surviving teenage girls, told you about Harvey Milk and social activism: "Yes, I know. he was my friend, "answer yourself, with your Catholic school manners – and tell New York magazine that you are" old. "
Now comes a Harvard young man, a graduate student, who returns your exhortation on the power of public opinion – you just quoted Abraham Lincoln – to ask about the Democrats "running on a platform of do not support yourself. "
"How can we manage this negative public sentiment, reorganize your coalition and bring it back under your leadership and support?", He declares in front of the crowd at the John F. Kennedy School of Government's auditorium.
Ms. Pelosi, the only woman ever to be Speaker of the House, said she had already opposed nominations for leadership. it is the vitality of the democratic party; she feeds on it. The audience applauds, but insists, "I say this especially to women because they think women are going to flee a fight, but you can not do it."
"Know your power, know your why, know your what, know your how, connect with your constituents and people who are supportive, those you want to convince," she adds, then pauses. "But do not let them think you're running away."
Two days later, in South Florida, Nancy Pelosi is still not on the run.
"Let me tell you something, it's not public opinion," she said in front of an empty espresso cup in downtown Miami, three weeks before Tuesday's election. "I have the feeling of public opinion and I am very confident about what follows in my country. And if Republicans want to spend 100 million dollars to criticize me and demonize me, I have to be pretty important. "
Ms. Pelosi, 78, is the highest ranking woman in American politics and in American political history. And as the only woman at the table for so long, she has become the substitute for all the complex feelings surrounding women in power.
The caricatures come easily. An announcement – Republicans have Over the past six weeks, over 61,000 people have interpreted it, representing more than one congressman than one of the California Congress members walking in a cheap version of Ms. Pelosi's signature stiletto heels, plus prostitute than a former speaker. Has anyone ever tried to put a candidate with Chuck Schumer's reading glasses or Mitch McConnell's wingtips?
But there is something different this year. With more women than ever before coming to the House – most of them are Democrats – Ms. Pelosi does not just know her power. To quote the slogan she repeats to the candidates, she declares it. She tells the public that she is a "dazzling fundraiser" (she reported half of every dollar raised by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee) and a "leading legislator" (one who guided and protected the health care legislation that so many Democrats are running on).
Even Republican polls show that ads against it do not displace many people; she is more popular than Mr. Trump and the other three great leaders of Congress. That does not say much – none of them would win a contest – but voters care less about it than about immigration, health care, corruption, gun politics. fire and Mr. Trump.
She spent months criss-crossing the country campaigning for this new generation, excited by what she calls a "pivotal year" for women in the House; she came to Congress five years before the Year of the Woman in 1992, after raising her five children, and there were only 23 women members of the House. She moves from New York to Boston, Florida in one day without evidence of weariness. It raises money and brings volunteers to the districts the Democrats hope to overthrow, whispering to the candidates, promoting the right to health – all, to paraphrase the old Ginger Rogers line, in three-inch heels.
And the growing number of women coming into politics this year speaks out for her, defending against what they see as Republican-style misogyny and ageism.
"How long can they kick Hillary Clinton when she is no longer part of the scene?" Said Mary Gay Scanlon, Democrat candidate outside Philadelphia, for which Ms. Pelosi had made campaign last month. "They need a surrogate, and that's Nancy Pelosi."
Rupali Shah, a 38-year-old lawyer who is waiting to meet Ms. Pelosi in Philadelphia, said, "When men are older, they have experience; when women are older, they are expired. If I think of who we need as a leader, it is a woman who raised five children. "
So that's what Nancy Pelosi is:
Christina Hartman, a former congressional candidate who hosted a panel with Ms. Pelosi at the Emerge office in Philadelphia, which trains women to run for office, told the crowd how she built her "Nancy Pelosi wardrobe" as armor. then introduced "our fighter, our champion of political candidates, our style icon and our political godmother fairy, Nancy Pelosi. "
Later, Ms. Pelosi is engulfed in the crowd, while Vern Mack, a local committee woman, talked about all the women like her in her neighborhood raising their grandchildren because their sons were killed by shots. "I'm impressed by her," Mack said afterwards.
Ms. Pelosi told the candidates that they should be ready, know their problems and have a plan of action: "I do not want you to be intimidated by what people are going to say because they are always trying to reduce what it is. we did it, "she told the audience at Emerge.
A son-in-law (not the Republican, although she has one) calls it the "Lady Gaga of American Politics," defending the quirks and the outcasts. To the transgender woman who wants to be a candidate, as well as to the Muslims who organized themselves after being refused a permit to build a mosque and who now welcome it during an activity Ms. Pelosi repeats her favorite aphorisms: "Know why, know your how" and "do not agonize, organize. "
She urged Democrats to set aside their thoughts of a "wave" or "tsunami" – it's the drops of water that matter. "Conor Lamb won with 627 votes," she told the volunteers.
In her party, Pelosi is criticized for not doing enough to help Democrats recognize and train young leaders and the emerging political style: the flow of small donors and young, often foreign, candidates. the base. Tahra Goraya, 45, a master's student at Harvard who has worked for non-profit groups for children's rights and Muslim rights, said Tahra Goraya, a Harvard masters student.
After seeing Ms. Pelosi speak at the Kennedy School, she was more optimistic, although suspicious. "I think she recognizes that the diversity of people entering the fold must be accepted," she said. "As the party is ready, we will see."
Given these criticisms, it was surprising to find that Ms. Pelosi was obviously familiar with the Parkland students, who became emblems of the new generation, as she spent more than an hour talking to them in the south of the park. Florida last month.
"We met with President Ryan once and we asked him what were some of his solutions," said Chris Grady, one of the students, in an interview. "At one point, he just lifted his hands up and said," I do not know. "With Nancy Pelosi, she is actively pursuing action that will save lives instead of lifting her hands in the air and saying," Well! , let more Americans get killed.
The other activists persuaded Hogg to apologize to Ms. Pelosi in August after her derogatory remarks to New York magazine. She responded by organizing a monthly call between her and young activists across the country.
"David said we need to rename the Democratic party, and I think Nancy Pelosi has already done it," said Alfonso Calderon, another student. "She has traveled the country in all areas – L.G.B.T.Q., gun violence, taxes, health care, money in politics. She addresses these issues not only because she knows they are important topics of discussion, but also because her constituents and citizens across the country tell her that this is what matters. "
In an interview, Ms. Pelosi did not want to dwell on the attacks on her. "The woman thing is a double-edged sword," she said. "Yes, there is misogyny there. But you get a huge advantage: the support of women. "
In 15 years of leadership, 68 new women Democrats have entered the House and the total has gone from 42 to 65.
Her enthusiasm for the flow of "fabulous women" running for election this year has left her more freedom on the track. "I am a shy person," she said. "For me to assert this way, it's not for me. It's for women. To say, do not take it. Trust who you are, what you have to offer. And understand: if you are effective, you will be opposed. But you are in the arena. That's what it is, and it's not for sensitive souls. "
She is pragmatic towards those who have advertised against her.
"If they come with millions of people to demonize me, what should a candidate do in her district?"
There are about two dozen votes against his candidacy for the presidency, not enough to sink him; some of the Democratic candidates claiming that they will not vote for it are in Republican districts where they are unlikely to win.
"My time is very high," she said. "I can call the phone instead of saying," I would like someone who does not even show up in Congress not to say that it's not for me. " "
"Hey, we are in politics," she said. "What did people think they were going to do, some tea?"
Ms. Pelosi does not intend to stay forever. She would have retired if Hillary Clinton won in 2016; there would eventually have been another woman at the table and the affordable care law protected. She calls herself "a bridge".
"A bridge within the party?" Asked Mark Gearan, his interviewer at the Kennedy School. "Bridge – how are you referring to the bridge?" Her voice was silent as she threw him the kind of look that faded the most in a mother.
It means a bridge to the next generation. she loves the laws, she thinks she is good. "One thing is to make sure people know how to do it," she said. "You have to gain experience, which is why I want so many young women."
A few days before the arrival, Nancy Pelosi was not scary, she was organizing the birthday party of her grandson, Paul. She helped him, along with his brother Thomas, to make their Halloween costumes. For Thomas, a hamburger (his best friend was fries). For Paul, a skeleton and mask of George W. Bush: The ghost of G.O.P. Past.
Source link
