The Trouble with Nancy

Contrasting perspectives on the Dems, divided by victory in the midterms. The New Yorker's Politics podcast calls it a blue wave, and celebrates centrist Krysen Sinema's Arizona Senate win as the best thing that's happened for the Dems since 2016 — politics is the art of the possible.  In contrast, former Politico editor Michael Wright writes in the NYRB that pragmatist-in-chief Nancy Pelosi is courting disaster by minimizing the discontent simmering on her left. ≈.6K words

Nancy Pelosi by James Ferguson

    If you've been following online discussion on Nancy Pelosi's bid to become House speaker again, you may have encountered this feminist perspective: two types of people don't like Nancy, Trumpsters who feel threatened by powerful women; and a fringe of leftish poseurs, championing impractical causes, who secretly feel the same way.  Hold that thought, recent media pieces emanating from NYC shed contrasting lights on the matter.

    On the Nov. 16 New Yorker's Political Scene podcast, John Cassidy, aligned with the Clinton wing of the party, offers his perspectives on the divided Dems after the midterms.  Cassidy views centrist Kyrsten Sinema's Senate win in Arizona as the biggest Dem success since 2016, despite her support for Trump's border wall.  But unabashed progressive Beto O'Rourke came up short against Ted Cruz in Texas -- draw your own conclusions.  Post-election, Dem leaders in the House and Senate are responding to different incentives.  Senators Booker and Brown are staking out strong anti-Trump positions, courting the 2020 Democratic primary electorate for their Presidential bids.  But in the House, the pragmatic Nancy Pelosi is mindful of the needs of Democratic candidates in swing districts, and remembers the 1998 Republican debacle; so she's wary of impeachment hearings.

    Pelosi does have her opponents among centrists, those who had to disavow her to get elected because in alt-reality she's a Republican bogeywoman.  But Cassidy thinks they'll eventually decide to support one of their own for Speaker.  She's also opposed by progressive as a matter of principle, but principles don't loom large in Cassidy's analysis of politics as the art of winning elections.

    Michael Hirsch does emphasize the vision thing in his article Who will Speak for the Democrats in the Nov. 8 issue of the New York Review of Books.  (Alas, the full article is only available to subscribers.) Per Hirsh, the "Democratic establishment needs to reckon with its policy failures—that it abandoned the middle class to globalization … and systematic fraud by Wall Street."  And the only substantive new ideas in that department have come from "Sanders Medicare-for-all Bill and Warren's Accountable Capitalism Act."  He also raises the matter of gerontocracy.  Pelosi, Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, and Assistant Minority Leader James Clyburn are all in their late 70s. Spring chickens compared to California's 84-year-old Senator for Life Diane Feinstein, but still fringe lefties want them to stand aside so new leadership can emerge.

    Pelosi's former chief of staff John Lawrence defended his ex-boss in the letters column of the subsequent issue, pointing out that she extended the limits of the politically possible with legislation like the Affordable Care Act.  And in the fresh faces department, he says Hirsch would do well to study "Pelosi's allocation of women and minorities to crucial committees and leadership."  The retort by Hirsch contains a brief anecdote that expresses everything that's wrong with Pelosi's leadership.

    In 2009, Pelosi could have chosen Brooksely Born to head the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission.  Born had been an early derivatives trading whistelblower during her tenure on the Commodities Future Trading Commission.  Instead, Pelosi followed the path of cronyism, choosing "her old California acquaintance Phil Angelides."  Born "knew how to conduct an investigation. Angelides did not," and the Crisis Inquiry Commission's report "disappeared without a trace."  So much for Pelosi's commitment to appointing women and minorities; so much for her testing the limits of the politically possible.

Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall — 𝓓𝓲𝓪𝓻𝔂 𝓸𝓯 𝓪 𝓟𝓸𝓭𝓬𝓪𝓼𝓽 𝓙𝓾𝓷𝓴𝓲𝓮, Steven Dybek reads "Miracle Polish" by Richard Millhauser ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Review of the New Yorker Fiction Podcast, Nov. 1 2018 episode, ≈400 words

The story starts 4:27 into the podcast, and continues to 47:00

Text version of Miracle Polish courtesy of the New Yorker.

A new world is only a new mind. — William Carlos Williams

    Once upon a time, a man looked into a mirror and saw something that redeemed his cautious, timid, disappointing life.  What was that something?  All the telltale defects of age and weight were still there, but the message was different; the bags under his eyes were not haggard emblems of futility, but the mark of "someone in the habit of facing and overcoming obstacles."  He decides the change was probably caused by cleaning the mirror with the bottle of Miracle Polish he bought from a door-to-door salesman he felt sorry for.

    But he also entertained the possibility of nervous breakdown.  He tested the mirror on his girl friend Monica, a woman habitually dissatisfied with her appearance, "a woman sinking slowly into defeat" — there was a good reason 

Richard Millhauser, 2011

why these two were a couple.  Monica preened before the mirror, where "she gave forth a fine resilience." Ergo, it's the polish, not a breakdown.

    He put at least one Miracle mirror in every room in his house, and when Monica visited, he preferred watching her reflection to looking at her.  Monica rebelled, and told the man he needed to choose, her, or — pointing at a mirror — her.

    Mirrors, as we know them, lead a triple life. All three shine in Millhauser's story.  As in fairy tales, they show us our souls. In hurried, practical moments that we neglect at our peril, they prevent social disaster by showing correctable flaws in appearance. And in private moments, they are the premier medium for conducting the illicit love affair the self: we can be coy, brazen, vindictive, etc., whatever our secret hearts desire from us.  And we can get lost in our reflection.

    Why, you may well ask, did the man not do the obvious thing, and apply what the mirror told him to improving his real life?  He did try.  The scene where he and Monica go for a picnic is so intensely beautiful that you might need to hit the pause button to catch your breath. And yet the scene being described is completely ordinary!  It's as if Millhauser is doing with words with the Miracle mirrors do with images. Are the redemptive, transformative powers of language one of his themes?  Thinking about it must have at least been part of his pleasure in writing this uncanny, powerful story.

- µ  2018