Hold on, Nancy Pelosi has feelings, don’t you have to be human for those?…
(Politico)– “Every minute is a new minute to me,” says Nancy Pelosi, and, with boxes packed in the hall outside, the soon-to-be-former speaker has already jumped ahead to her vision of the “humming, whirling entity” House Democrats can still be in the coming Congress.
“I’m obviously devastated by the loss we had,” she will admit, but expect no tears, no retreat on health care reform. Pelosi mourns the Democratic talent lost but not her gavel. And on this particular Friday afternoon, she skipped President Barack Obama’s signing ceremony for his tax deal with the new Republican powers and instead drew her energy from a morning meeting with the fresh crop of ranking Democrats on House committees.
…There’s some denial to be sure. In the course of an interview, Pelosi repeatedly spoke of her ranking Democrats as committee “chairmen” when they won’t be in the new Congress. Four years of restrictive rules on House debate seem a lost memory: “I’m thoroughly agnostic. If Republicans have a good idea, let’s go with it.”
And by her reckoning, little or nothing about November’s losses can be attributed to the enactment of health care reform.
“If we had never passed the bill, we would still have had these losses. We were told a year ago: ‘If you’re anywhere near 10 percent unemployment, there’s no chance you can hold the majority.’”