The Anti-Pelosi Rebellion Has Its Origins In The TEA Party Movement
To understand why the Seth Moulton led #FiveWhiteGuys Anti-Pelosi Rebellion is happening, it helps to go back to the “TEA Party” movement which started in February of 2009. The TEA Party movement was comprised of a group of citizens who put forth various Conservative ideas, such as the idea that taxes were already high enough (by some accounts, TEA Party stands for Taxed Enough Already Party). In July 2010, after Conservative American citizens had held dozens of various “TEA Party” rallies around the country, Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann founded the “TEA Party Caucus” in coordination with the TEA Party moment. In November of 2010, a lot of TEA Party Republicans were elected to the U.S. House, and eventually, 60 House Republicans had joined the TEA Party Caucus by 2011. Furthermore, these TPC Republicans decided that their elections were a mandate from the American people to pull Congress as far to the right as possible. In 2011, when these TPC Republicans started their new session, House Republicans decided to maintain John Boehner as their leader and elected him to Speaker of the House.
These hardcore Conservatives also went on to become the bane of Speaker Boehner's existence, always demanding bills that were more and more Conservative. What would generally happen is the House Republicans who were not part of the roughly 60 TPC Republicans would work out a bill, then carry it over to the TPC Republicans, seeking their blessing. A lot of the time, these TPC Republicans and other House Conservatives would demand all kinds of new things in a bill that made it very difficult for the Republicans to come up with a bill that 218 Republicans could agree on. The TPC Republicans did not care how hard they made Boehner’s life. They would always claim that the voters were demanding these things, and so bills created by the House Republicans were dragged further and further to the right. By January 2015, The TPC Caucus had shrunk to around 20+ members, but the habit of hardcore Conservatives banding together to demand concessions on many bills continued.
Also in January 2015, perhaps because the “TEA Party” label had grown old, the “House Freedom Caucus” was born. It operated in much the same way as the TPC Republicans did—making demands that House bills be more Conservative. It initially started with 9 House Republicans and currently has about 24 members.
In September of that same year, 2015, the House Freedom Caucus began pressuring then Speaker of the House John Boehner to resign his Speakership because once in a while Speaker Boehner actually tried to get the HFC to listen to reason, which the HFC did not like. After almost 4 years of dealing with TPC Republicans and then HFC Republicans, Speaker Boehner was pretty tired of the whole thing and resigned his speakership. Since then, the HFC, along with other Conservative House Republicans have been making life miserable for each new House Republican leader.
Along Comes The Anti-Pelosi Rebellion
Keep in mind that the TEA Party Caucus really gained its maximum strength in January 2011 when Republicans began its new session in the House as the Majority Party and the TPC had 60 members. Their kind of hardball “do what we say or we will sink this bill” politics is only really effective when their party is in the majority. Now that Republicans in the House will be in the minority, the TPC and House Freedom Caucus will have much less say on what goes on. So, Corporate Donors can now create an HFC equivalent in the Democratic House majority by pressuring centrist Democrats who took big money from Financial, Insurance, and Real Estate Corporations to do their bidding, like say, getting rid of the House liberal leader.
On November 19, 2018, thirteen days after this year’s Midterm Election, when everyone realized that the Democrats would regain their House majority, the original 16 mostly centrist Democratic House members of the #FiveWhiteGuy Rebellion, led by Seth Moulton, signed a letter demanding that Nancy Pelosi resign her position as Minority Leader, similar to what the House Freedom Caucus did in 2015 to then-Speaker John Boehner. These rebels want to control the Democratic part of the House, and they are trying to pull the House Democrats to the Right, just as the TPC and the HFC did. If the Seth Moulton led #FiveWhiteGuy Rebellion works, this is the most likely way that it will unfold:
First, the rebels will get rid of San Francisco liberal Nancy Pelosi as Minority Leader by showing her that she will not get the votes that she needs to become Speaker Of The House (they need more than 25 rebels to do that, unless some of the rebels actually vote for the Republican House Minority Leader Elect Kevin McCarthy as Speaker). Then, the mostly centrist Seth Moulton led group of 16, together with the mostly centrist Nine House Democrats from the Problem Solvers Caucus, who are also making demands, and along with whomever else they can find, will demand that the new leader be “bipartisan” (read "centrist”, or a lot farther to the right than Nancy Pelosi). Before you know it, the Democratic-controlled House could end up being led by some corporate controlled shill like Seth Moulton, and the extremely important Democratic House victory that cost us so much blood, sweat, tears, and money could be greatly crippled.
We should do all we can do support Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and to thwart these rebels who have corporate interests, rather than best interests of the Democratic Party voters in their hearts. However, if somehow these 25 Rebels are able to prevent Nancy Pelosi from regaining her speakership, we do have an alternative. If the rebellion gets so entrenched that Nancy Pelosi is not able to regain her Speakership, she should nominate as her replacement someone who is truly liberal to both keep the House from being dragged to the Right and to show the true colors of the Seth Moulton led group of 16 and the Problem Solvers Caucus group of 9 (because both groups will, of course, freak out if her replacement is truly liberal).
Under no circumstances do I want the group of Twenty Five Twits to unseat Nancy Pelosi. Nancy Pelosi was the very person who crafted the message of “Healthcare for everyone, better wages, and less corruption” that so many House Democrats ran on and won. However, if Nancy Pelosi ends up being blocked to the point that she cannot regain her Speakership, she might want to consider nominating someone liberal, female, young, and a person of color. If Ms. Pelosi must step down, she might want to consider nominating someone like Democratic Representative-Elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY).
Let us say, for example, that she nominates Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. After Representative Ocasio-Cortez wins the Speakership, Nancy Pelosi could show her the ropes for the next two years. Representative Ocasio-Cortez’s ascension to power would satisfy the people demanding someone new, someone younger, someone female, and someone of color. It would ensure a new leader who could work incredibly hard and was also very bright, just like Nancy Pelosi. Finally, it would ensure that Democrats were led by a true liberal and not a corporate shill, and it would ensure that the Twenty Five Twits lose this battle in a huge way. They would have gotten rid of the wonderful Nancy Pelosi, only to be replaced by someone at least as liberal, and someone who could be around for a long, long time. Wow, it would be truly wonderful. I would laugh and laugh. :)