Today, I had the honor of delivering the signatures of 32,089 Kossacks to Speaker Nancy Pelosi in support of her campaign for Democratic Minority Leader. The image below is the trainspotting image my wife Natasha took of me as we entered the Speaker’s office in The Capitol:
The text of the cover letter to the petition read:
November 11th, 2010
To the Honorable Nancy Pelosi;
On behalf of 32,089 members of the Daily Kos community, it is my great honor to present you with the following petition thanking and supporting you for running for House Minority Leader. The petition reads:
Speaker Pelosi,
We, the undersigned members of the Daily Kos community, thank you for deciding to run for House Minority Leader. You have been a great Speaker of the House, and we believe you will be again after the 2012 elections.
We've got your back in this fight.
Give ‘em hell, Madam Speaker.
In solidarity,
Christopher Bowers
Campaign Director, Daily Kos
It was especially important that thousands of you left comments to Speaker Pelosi in support of her campaign. In addition to actually delivering a petition in person, those supportive comments are the difference between someone actually reading a petition, and it just immediately going into a folder.
As for the the news articles desperately hoping Pelosi will go down, seriously, just laugh them off:
In a fresh sign of turmoil among defeated Democrats, a growing number of the rank and file say they won't support House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in a politically symbolic roll call when the new Congress meets in January.
"The reality is that she is politically toxic," said Illinois Rep. Mike Quigley, one of several Democrats who are trying to pressure Pelosi to step aside as her party's leader in the wake of historic election losses to Republicans last week.
Pelosi startled many Democrats with a quick postelection announcement that she would run for minority leader.
The stupidity and willful ignorance of articles like these would bother me if I couldn’t stop laughing at them. Consider:
- No one has announced their candidacy against Pelosi, even though at least one Blue Dog had promised he would challenge her if she ran.
- The attempt to delay the House leadership elections failed. The vote will be held next Wednesday, come hell or high water. That there was even an attempt to delay the vote, rather than support another candidate, was already a sign of weakness on the party of the anti-Pelosi forces. That the attempt to delay the vote was defeated was a sign of extreme weakness by those same forces.
- Also, let’s also refresh ourselves with Nancy Pelosi’s basic strategy on House votes:
During an interview in late July, Speaker Nancy Pelosi explained her legislative philosophy to me. "You get the votes," she said, balling one hand into a fist, "and you take the vote," and she punched her other hand. "Because you never know what can happen."
Does anyone really think that this wasn’t the case in this campaign, too?
You guys really kicked ass in support of Speaker Pelosi in this fight. Great job—it will make not only a difference in this fight, but in all of our legislative efforts going forward.
I’ll be posting updates on the House leadership election as they come in.