Pelosi beats Shuler for Minority Leader position 150 – 43

C-Span has just announced this and Pelosi is about to speak with the Press… Formal announcement won’t take place, however, until tomorrow.

C-Span’s Washington Journal is discussing the House Democratic Leadership Election…

To start with, Senator McConnell and Representative Boehner have exercised their power by telling President Obama’s office that they can’t make the meeting he scheduled two weeks ago to speak with the Caucus Leaders… they’ve gotten it postponed to November 3oth. I’m pretty sure they didn’t have to do this…but they are certainly trying to make it clear who is in charge.

That out of the way, I’m listening to Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D – Oregon) who is certain that Nancy Pelosi will be the overwhelming winner in the Leadership election among House Democrats. Blumenauer says he wishes that yesterday’s meetings on the subject had been open… they were not… so that the country could see that the Democrats are actually unified in their move into the minority. I’m not sure if that is really true, although we’ve gone from 16 to 5 Blue Dog Democrats, which should leave us with a majority of progressives, and Pelosi is the likely lead in the Liberal/Progressive community.

If Pelosi IS elected (which will probably happen today or tomorrow), it will be a message to Obama to get with the program and join the Progressives who didn’t abandon America as he seems to have done with his “cooperation” with the Republicans (who, as we see from the first item in this post, have no interest in cooperating with him.)

What all this means for the Lame Duck Session will become obvious very quickly (it is not a long session as it is) and the future activity of Congress in the next two years will be very predictable.

Related Articles

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• You: Shuler launches bid to oust Pelosi, become Democratic leader (washingtonpost.com)
• Democratic Civil War Back On? (minx.cc)
• The case for Nancy Pelosi (politico.com)
• Pelosi Expected to Remain House Democrats’ Leader (time.com)