Ninety Miles an Hour (Down a Dead End Street)
By 
When Pelosi said that she was unimpressed with some members of Biden’s team, I guess we now have some idea who she’s talking about:
Unsurprisingly, Pelosi has garnered some enemies for her actions in the Biden drama. A group of Democrats, including within Biden’s orbit and the Democratic National Committee, remain bitterly upset with Pelosi over her public pressure campaign to push Biden out.
Some have privately pledged to find ways to diminish Pelosi’s influence in the party after the November election — a seemingly impossible and risky task given the former House speaker’s stature among Democrats. But, they may seek to target her daughter Christine Pelosi, who is rumored to be considering a run for her mother’s House seat whenever Pelosi decides to permanently step aside, according to two people familiar with the very loose conversations who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution from the party.
[…]
One Democrat who feels Pelosi betrayed Biden is Anita Dunn, former senior adviser to Biden. In a conversation with Politico on Tuesday, she recounted telling staff during her farewell party that watching “The Godfather” was one of the most instructive lessons about politics and power.
“One of my favorites is ‘Revenge is a dish best served cold.’ Okay?” Dunn said. “What I told the staff was you don’t need to go get revenge right away. You can pick your times and just wait for your moments.”
Let’s leave aside the farcical idea that a group of DNC randos led by a replacement-level functionary are going to muscle the most powerful Speaker of the House since Rayburn if not ever. What is the leverage point against Pelosi supposed to be? To review:
1)Pelosi was the most important Democrat urging Biden to drop out of the race.
2)Pelosi had the ex ante support of the large majority of the party’s rank-and-file voters and almost certainly a majority of its elected officials.
3)Biden stepped down and it immediately had a very material and very positive impact on the chances of Democrats retaining the White House, in addition to generating a huge wave on enthusiasm and a massive fundraising haul.
I dunno, I think this anti-Pelosi revenge movement is going to have a lot of trouble attracting adherents.
While we’re here, I think there’s been a lot of willful misinterpretation of this quote:
Many of us who were concerned about the election wanted to have an open process. It was an open process—anyone could have gotten in,” Pelosi said. “She had the endorsement of the president, and she, politically astutely, took advantage of it and shut down—not shut down, but won the nomination. But anybody else could have gotten in.
Of course, the misinterpreters generally paraphrase or leave out everything after the first sentence, ie. Pelosi arguing that what happened was an “open process” as she defined the term, in the sense that nobody was literally forced not to run but just followed their logical incentives. (And note she said “process,” not “convention,” a rather critical distinction.) The idea that Pelosi actually wanted a Wrestlemania convention and was disappointed, however, makes no sense at all:
"Nancy Pelosi had a very sincere and elaborate plan to have a Wrestlemania convention, that could be immediately terminated by Joe Biden making the endorsement it was almost universally believed he would give" maybe leave that idea in the oven for 10 more seconds or so— Scott Lemieux (@LemieuxLGM) August 22, 2024
The idea that Pelosi believed that it would be possible to assemble a majority coalition against the sitting vice president endorsed by the president starting from scratch in 3 weeks — or was blindsided by Biden endorsing his vice president — and was gravely disappointed that nobody tried is about as credible as the idea that Anita Dunn is going to end Christine Pelosi’s political career. People like Maureen Dowd wanted Thunderdome and are projecting it onto Pelosi, who was obviously just trying to tamp down “IT WAS A CORONATION” bullshit and encouraging Harris to get the delegates wrapped up as quickly as possible. She knows what she’s doing!