Democrats nominate Nancy Pelosi as president to lead the Biden era

Democrats in the US House of Representatives nominated Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday (local time) as the speaker to bring them into the presidency of Joe Biden, but she would be leading a smaller and ideologically divided majority as she tries to lead his agenda towards enactment.

Democrats used a voice vote to make Pelosi choose to serve two more years in office. Scattered across the country, it was the party’s first virtual leadership election, a response to the coronavirus pandemic.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and No. 3 Party Leader Jim Clyburn, the highest-ranking black member of Congress, were re-elected to their posts, like Pelosi, unopposed. Clyburn revived Biden’s wavering bid for the Democratic presidential nomination this year by helping him win the South Carolina primary, a watershed moment in Biden’s campaign.

“Let us all be advocates for unity in the Democratic Party, where our values ​​are opportunity and community,” Pelosi, the first speaker, wrote to Democrats this week.

Underscoring Pelosi’s emphasis on inclusion, five of the seven Democrats who had planned to deliver speeches supporting her candidacy were women. Among them was Congresswoman-elect Nikema Williams, who won the Atlanta-area district represented by Democratic Rep. John Lewis, the civil rights champion, until her death in July.

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The full House will formally elect the new speaker when the new Congress meets in early January, shortly before Biden’s inauguration on January 20. Hoyer and Clyburn jobs are party positions that do not need House approval.

Pelosi has earned widespread recognition among Democrats as the main enemy of outgoing US President Donald Trump in the battles for impeachment, immigration and healthcare. She has given the best she has ever received from the name-calling Republican president, sometimes directly to her face, prompting him to call her “Crazy Nancy” and his supporters to create memes and action figures in her honor.

But with some votes still counted in this month’s election, 10 incumbent House Democrats have been defeated, frustrating expectations of adding seats and hurting party morale. Democrats were on track to have perhaps a 222-213 majority, one of the smallest in decades.

This has sparked accusations, and progressives say the party failed to adequately win over minorities and young liberal voters. The moderates say they were hurt by far-left initiatives such as defunding the police and that Pelosi should have reached a pre-election stimulus deal with the White House.

In addition to bitterness over the election setback, many Democrats continue to call for new leadership. Pelosi and Hoyer have been the number one and second House Democrats since 2003, while Clyburn rose to third place in 2007. Pelosi and Clyburn are 80 years old, Hoyer 81.

Pelosi’s reelection by the House would give her a seventh and eight years as president. It served the first four during the 2000s until Republicans regained a majority in the House in the 2010 Tea Party elections, a conservative uprising that heralded the rise of Trump.

In an indication of her strength, a Tory Democrat who had opposed Pelosi before said he hoped she would be re-elected and said he could support her this time.

“I think you get it,” Rep. Kurt Schrader, who said he has spoken with Pelosi about the need for a moderate agenda, said in an interview. “She can be the bulwark against the extreme left.”

Schrader said that far-left progressives have been “toxic to our brand” by favoring policies that he says cost jobs. “We cannot continue to speak disdainfully to people and just talk about identity politics,” he said.

House Democrats also voted Wednesday and Thursday in lower leadership positions.

When the House elects its new president, Pelosi will need a majority of the votes cast by both parties. With nearly all Republicans expected to back their leader, Rep. Kevin McCarthy, Pelosi can afford to lose only a few Democrats.

When Pelosi got the support she needed to become a speaker in 2018, she said she had accepted a proposal that limited her to serve on the job only until 2022. Several lawmakers and aides said memories of that commitment could lessen her opposition this time.

Also helping Pelosi is Rep. Cheri Bustos’s decision to step aside as chair of the Democratic wing of the House.

Some Democrats have criticized the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee for insufficiently protecting the moderate Democratic rulers of swing districts. They are also unhappy that the committee failed to detect the large number of Republican voters Trump drew to the polls, which was overlooked by Republican and independent pollsters alike.

“Having Trump on the ballot in ’20 was very different than not having him on the ballot in ’18,” said Rep. Don Beyer, another Pelosi supporter.

When Democrats took back the House in 2018, 32 of them voted against Pelosi’s nomination for president. But that was a larger majority than this, which gave him more room for error at the time.

By the time the full House elected her in January 2019, she had reduced her opposition and only 13 Democrats voted against her or voted “present.”

Of the 13 Democrats who opposed Pelosi in 2019, two have been defeated and one, Rep. Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey, became a Republican. That leaves 10 Democrats who voted against him, although another, Anthony Brindisi of New York, may still lose his election.

Pelosi has pushed through bills in the House, which died in the GOP-ruled Senate, incorporating Democratic priorities to review ethics and campaign finance laws, reduce health care costs and rebuild infrastructure. It has also been a great fundraiser for the candidates.

To prevent lawmakers from unsafe huddling in one room, Democratic leadership candidates were commenting to scattered lawmakers using Zoom, the online meeting platform. Republicans met Tuesday in a crowded hotel ballroom and re-elected their current leadership team.

Democrats’ votes were being cast in a new app designed to keep the process secure through the use of encryption.

In a test conducted Tuesday, Democrats voted for their favorite musician of all time. Her pick by a wide margin: The Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin.