Questioning Pelosi's remaining as minority leader is sexist-- of course

Submitted by Mastodon on Thu, 2012-11-15 21:26

Story here. Excerpt:

'Pelosi's wind-up was epic. For nearly 10 minutes, she praised her fellow female members and admitted that "we want more." She emptied the cliché-o-matic, talking about the need to "reignite the American dream" and work "for a healthy nation, a healthy political arena, a healthy planet." Finally, after cable had cut away, she announced that she'd "made the decision that some of you might have some interest in." She was running for leader again. Her team of women burst into cheers.

In 2010 there were real questions about whether Pelosi could lead the party. Fortunately for her, there weren't many conservative Democrats around to ask the question. Rep. Heath Shuler, a moderate Democrat from western North Carolina, challenged her on the grounds that she'd made the Democrats unelectable, and he got creamed. This year, Pelosi could point to eight Democratic gains—just 17 seats away from control of the House again. Shuler and some other Blue Dogs had been beaten or gerrymandered out of existence.
...
"Mrs. Pelosi," said Russert, "some of your colleagues privately say that your decision to stay on prohibits the party from having younger leadership. It hurts the party in the long term. What's your response?"

The women around Pelosi erupted—booing, hissing, one member snapping "discrimination!" Pelosi told Russert to ask the same question to Mitch McConnell. The women cheered.

"Excuse me!" interjected Russert, who was asking a question that was inevitably going to come up. "You, Mr. Hoyer, Mr. Clyburn, you're all over 70. Does staying on prevent younger leadership from moving forward?"

"So you're suggesting that everyone move aside?" asked Pelosi.

"No, I'm simply saying that to delay younger leadership from moving forward ..."

"Let's, for the moment, honor that as a legitimate question, even though it's very offensive. You don't realize that, I guess. The fact is that everything I have done in my, I guess, decade now of leadership, is to let younger and newer people come up. In my own personal experience, it was very important for me to elect young women. I came to Congress when my youngest, Alexandra, was in college. I knew that men who came here in their 30s had a jump on me."'

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I am in fact surprised at Russert's comment. It's actually much more offensive from an ageism standpoint and indeed if he had asked that of a senior male leader of the House, that man'd have every right himself to be peeved. But of course, both Miss P. and her buddies have to pull out the Woman Card. Fine, we're used to it.

But ya know, there is the one lingering question most Americans have after this year's general election, and that is this: If none of the leadership in the House and Senate, even the minority leaders, turn over in any way, what will actually change? In order for The Machine's gears to get turning in some way, different forces may be needed to be applied to the wheels to get them going. Personally, I am just not seeing that. Same people running the shootin' match as we've had these past 4 years, GOP and Demo. alike, and look where it's gotten us-- our national debt has grown from roughly $10 trillion in 2008 now to $16 trillion. That is incomprehensible to me. It is in fact flabbergasting. It's outrageous, hugely reckless and grossly irresponsible. Yet, our national governing personalities remain at the helm and we're busy buying our own mortgage bonds in a desperate attempt to prop up confidence in the financial system at $40 billion/month. Wow. Let's do the math: 12 x $40 billion = 480 billion. OK, that goes on of for, say, 2 years, and you get $960 billion. One month's worth of bond-buying short of $1 trillion. And we're buying it with *what*, I ask you? Money raised from auctioning off more debt, I imagine. Good grief.

Thing is, in a democracy, you don't know who to blame. Collectively, we keep voting in people who love pork more than a confirmed carnivore at a pig-roast. And other than getting us all into a huge amount of debt, I am not sure what else it's doing except perhaps garner support during re-election campaigns. If the people allow themselves to be bought off so easily, well, they get what they deserve I suppose. I just think it's too bad that we're making such decisions not so much for ourselves but the people coming after us who will be left holding the bag.

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Submitted by Matt on Fri, 2012-11-16 02:10