Last updated on September 25th, 2023 at 09:00 pm
Nancy Pelosi is kind of like the rest of the thinking women in this country, in that she has absolutely had it with Washington beltway dismissal of women.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi did an interview with MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell that aired on Tuesday, in which Mitchell inserted obvious Republican talking points about how voters don’t seem to care about women’s rights so much anymore, but are more focused on “crime” and “inflation.”
Speaker Pelosi just wasn’t having it. Pelosi said she didn’t agree with much of what Mitchell had said and then proceeded to take the argument apart bit by bit, noting, “In fact, 80% of people who care about a woman’s right to choose say it will determine who they vote for.”
Oh, just 80% of those who say they care about a woman’s right? Huh.
Video:
Andrea Mitchell: Let’s talk about rising inflation concerns along with crime, giving momentum, new momentum to Republicans after the Democrats were closing the gap, the historic gap.
Speaker Pelosi: Yes.
Andrea Mitchell: After the Supreme Court ruling, there was huge outrage. That has seemed to subside, at least among overriding concerns. Despite all the legislative accomplishments — I want to cite them, I want to say it’s been an extraordinary session, you and the president have done so much in terms of domestic concerns, the economy. Why is this message — why do you think the president hasn’t gotten it through to the voters?
Speaker Pelosi: First of all, let me say that I think much of what you have said I don’t agree with. That is to say, The New York Times poll is an outlier.
Andrea Mitchell: It’s the Real Clear Politics average showing similar issues.
Speaker Pelosi: But that was one that brought down the — it was an outlier. It wasn’t that big a sample. I dismiss that. I have been — since congress adjourned, I have been in an average of five states a week. I can tell you that women’s concerns about their freedom are very, very much still very significant in terms of how they will vote.
In fact, 80% of people who care about a woman’s right to choose say they will — it will determine who they vote for. Again, Washington has always been — Republicans are going to win, there’s no question, for a year and a half. Now that that has diminished in terms of that certainty and there is a real race on, the Republicans are pouring endless money, dark, undisclosed special interest money into the campaigns. But we’re holding our own. It’s a matter of who turns out to vote.
There are issues that we — of course, we want to fight inflation. It’s a global issue. But some of the inflation in our country sprang from the fact that this president created nearly 10 million jobs — at least 9 million jobs working with the private sector. The private sector creates a lot of that.
And when you — as the distinguished chair of the fed told me when I was a new member of congress, Chairman Greenspan said, when you are talking about inflation, unemployment can be dangerously low. So they are not unrelated. So we feel pretty good about it. I track these campaigns very carefully. I believe that we will have the mobilization on the ground to turn out the vote, the clear message we want to give women freedom of choice. They want to have a ban on abortion.
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Pelosi is correct about the poll results being based on outliers.
There’s also the issue that women now already know what is at stake, so the burning rage has settled into quiet determination to vote.
It’s been a few months since the Republican Supreme Court stole women’s rights. It’s not new anymore. We are all getting adjusted to hearing the stories we knew would come, of women and girls suffering, of their lives being put at risk, and of Republicans not caring – because we always knew “pro-life” wasn’t actually a moral stance about life. When women’s and girls’ lives don’t matter, which they clearly do not, the phony dressing behind decades of effort to control women comes into focus.
Pelosi bases her take on the pulse of women by… actually talking to women. This is probably a new concept for the beltway, which rebuked rape victims for protesting the unvetted Brett Kavanaugh during his phony “confirmation” hearings (4,500 tips were sent to the FBI about Kavanaugh, that they just passed on to the Trump White House and no one knows what has become of them now).
Women voters who feel entitled to authority over their lives and bodies are not very interesting to corporate media (mostly run by men, and definitely serving the interests of wealthy white men), unless of course they’re protesting women’s rights.
The hostility toward women as powerful beings was made very evident during the 2016 presidential race.
Mitchell did acknowledge Speaker Pelosi’s absolutely incredible legislative push with President Joe Biden – legislation designed to actually help the people, like the American Rescue Plan, The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the Build Back Better Act, the Save Lives Act, the Protecting Medicare and American Farmers from Sequester Cuts Act… there are too many to list here. There are a lot more bills just waiting for an actual Democratic majority in the Senate.
Mitchell trying to focus on the two issues Republicans keep pushing in ads in an attempt to distract from their full frontal attack on all voters, on elections, on democracy itself, on women and girls, on workers, on unions, on fair wages, on transparency – was an obvious assist for those issues. An attempt to make them the biggest thing.
For some reason no one asks Republicans how they can run on “crime” when their party leader is a criminal and they are fine with his crimes, as well as his entourage of mob boss enforcers’ crimes.
And if voters really cared more about inflation and crime than basic human rights and their democracy, Republicans wouldn’t need to be pouring so much dark money into their races. Look at Mehmet Oz “all abortion is murder” in Pennsylvania, fueled by money from outside the state.
If inflation is really the driving issue, why isn’t the media informing voters that Republicans plan to cut taxes for the rich if they win Congress? That’s their “plan” – a plan that has failed to do much but enrich the wealthy every other time it was tried.
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs comes into play once again, as it did with then President Obama’s Affordable Care Act. It tells us that people must feel physically safe and protected, these needs are core to our beings. Women are not safe, that is clear. Women know that they or their daughter or any person who can get pregnant might be put in a life-threatening situation if they’re in a red state, or even if they’re in a blue state and their doctor doesn’t prioritize women’s lives and health.
Speaker Pelosi is just a human being — and so she’s not perfect. She is also wealthy herself (like most of our representatives), and there’s always the fact that the Stock Act needs to be strengthened. But there has been no better Speaker for the People in our lifetime. Her word is worth a lot.
She is also a bad ass hero, who saved this country while she was under attack by Trump terrorists. She literally saved our entire democracy.
This Pelosi, the I’m-not-appeasing-this-crap-anymore Pelosi, is the best Pelosi, because she brings receipts and she has the gravitas and legislative achievements to back it up. This woman speaks for The People.
We will only know after the midterms how women turnout. But it would be very wrong to assume that because women aren’t seen screaming in the streets every day, they aren’t angry in a way that doesn’t bode well for the entire next generation of Republicans. It’s not possible to sustain those levels of anger daily, but those thoughts solidify into knowledge and action.
And now we have come full circle, back to the reason why Republicans are pushing issues they have no plans to actually address – and that is because Republicans do not even pretend to represent the people’s will anymore. So now the media is trying to convince us that our will isn’t what it is.
They are wrong. They don’t know women; Nancy Pelosi does.
Sarah has been credentialed to cover President Barack Obama, then VP Joe Biden, 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and exclusively interviewed Speaker Nancy Pelosi multiple times and exclusively covered her first home appearance after the first impeachment of then President Donald Trump.
Sarah is two-time Telly award winning video producer and a member of the Society of Professional Journalists.
Connect with Sarah on Post, Mastodon @PoliticusSarah@Journa.Host, & Twitter.
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