At some point, people should realize that Nancy Pelosi is just a politician. That’s not a moral judgment. It’s a statement of fact. A car salesman is a car salesman. His/her job is to sell cars. His/her methods include hustling customers every which way possible to sell cars. Some statements might be true. Some might not be. They might offer you some deals. They might be passing you some light scams. In between there’s a lot of fluff and manipulation. But I’m fairly certain most car salesmen are decent people and take care of their families etc.
A politician exists to get re-elected first, serve the constituency second, serve the needs of the Republic third. All Nancy wants to do is to retain her majority. She has made a political calculation to cede power to the ‘moderates’, the 20 or so Dems who sit in districts that Trump narrowly won in 2016, and whose unpopularity gave Dems the chance to win them in 2018. That’s right, we won those districts because Trump is unpopular in purple districts. In a relative sense, she doesn’t care whether Dems win the Presidency or the Senate. They’re ‘nice to haves’ but she wants to be Speaker in 2021, period.
Nancy’s challenge is that she’s being asked to save the Republic and help the national party when she doesn’t want to if it means sidetracking her from her legislative and fundraising goals that she has set to put her members, her ‘majority makers’, in place to win in 2020.
Where she’s mistaken is in thinking that her tactics matter that much in a national election against an incumbent. What drives 2020 will be Trump’s approval rating. Make him less popular and that increases the Dems chances to win in purple districts in 2020. Allow his popularity to grow and your chances diminish. Her own career tells us this. She won in 2006/2008 because Bush was historically unpopular. She lost in 2010, gained seats in 2012, and lost again in 2014 and 16 (minor gains) b/c of Obama’s relative popularity.
Seen in this light, allowing Trump to behave like a dictator and strong man helps Trump. That’s his brand. That’s what he’s selling to folks. Passing that immigration funding bill on GOP terms and timing helped Trump. Letting Trump break norms helps Trump. Not impeaching helps Trump. Not investing in oversight helps Trump. Anything that puts Trump on the defensive helps Dems.
Anything that helps Trump hurts the Dems chances in the House. Anything that hurts Trump helps the Dems chances.
The reason is simple: Presidential approval tells you where Indies will lean and which party will have a relative turnout advantage. When presidential approval is net negative, the opposition party has high turnout and Indies tend to lean to the opposition. When it’s high, the opposite happens.
That impacts purple districts more than red or blue ones. They’re more volatile.
The irony here is if the Dems want to keep the House, they actually need to go harder at Trump. If they want to frame the election, they need to take some of AOC’s ideas on immigration (her promotion of kids in cages and abolishing DHS) and use them to frame the debate on immigration to make Trump’s views less popular. They can then slip in their comprehensive immigration reform (more popular). If you take the immigration issue away from Trump, he has less punch at the ballot box and purple Dems win.