There is a saying in politics; The Republican Party is terrified of its base, while the Democratic Party – along with its leadership – despises its base. While perhaps comical, this cuts to the core the differences between the two major parties and decades of history have proven this sentiment true. GOP leadership actively panders to its base with an ever-increasing ferocity, playing to its most far-right and racist tendencies. At the same time, the base of the Democratic party has awakened, becoming more progressive and supportive of bold new ideas. The leadership of the Democratic party has actively tried to water down these ideas or simply rebuff them altogether. Much of the Democratic party’s leadership legislates and campaigns in a weak and antiquated fashion. Perhaps, someone should inform them that it is 2019, not 1999.

We live in a very different world now, one inhabited by an imbecilic president that knows nothing about the inner workings of government and has zero respect for our collective democratic ideals. Our planet and our very lives are threatened by the growing existential threat of climate change. We have always had a world divided on the lines of class and privilege, but the segregation of power increasing the amount of economic inequality in this country is shockingly immoral and dangerously unsustainable. Racial and gendered hierarchies are nothing new, serving as the very brick and mortar of the founding of this country. While it is certainly not unique to have a racist occupant of the White House, its present incarnation lays bare the deplorable under-rot of hatred and bigotry that inhabits the psyche of this nation.

In steps Nancy Pelosi, self-proclaimed master legislator, leader of the Democrats, and Speaker of the House. Pelosi has been a member of congress since 1987 and was first elected Speaker in 2007. She is inarguably one of the most powerful Democrats in the country. After Democrats regained control of the House of Representatives in 2018, she successfully fended off a disorganized insurgency from centrist (and mostly white male) members and once again reclaimed the Speakers gavel.

Now, more than ever, Democrats, and the country, need a strong and strategical leader. Speaker Pelosi is proving to be neither of those things. Every day, it is more and more apparent that she is failing abysmally at resisting a racist and authoritarian president and is ever more out of touch with the base of the Democratic party. Now she is certainly not the only member of Democratic leadership that this can be said about. In the Senate, Chuck Schumer is even more spineless. What is different in Pelosi’s case is that given her majority in the House, she has power; power that she is wielding ineffectively. The 2018 midterms were seen as a rebuke on the Trump administration, with Democrats flipping forty seats. This blue wave provided a glimmer of hope for a frustrated left. Then and now, Speaker Pelosi has claimed that “no one is above the law”, and “we will hold the president accountable.” But, what does that accountability look like?

The most obvious way to hold this authoritarian petulant man-child of a president accountable is the process of impeachment. It is the only real tool given to Congress in the Constitution for checking the powers of the presidency. With all of Pelosi’s repeated claims about Trumps abuses of power and criminality, she consistently rules out the possibility of impeachment. Due to her memories of the Clinton impeachment hearings backfiring on Republicans in the 90’s, she has decided that the risks to her majority in the House are too high.

While the proceedings that the Republican held Congress brought forth against Bill Clinton had nominal negative effects on the party, the two cases are worlds apart, politically and constitutionally. Firstly, at the height of the Clinton hearings the president held the highest approval ratings of his entire presidency, as high as 73%. In stark contrast, President Trump is highly divisive and unpopular, currently sitting at an approval rating of 42%. In fact, the president’s approval rating has never gotten above 46%.

Setting unpopularity aside, there is a strong legal and constitutional justification for immediately beginning impeachment hearings. Article II, Section 4 of the constitution lays out the grounds for impeachment, “…treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.” While treason and bribery are fairly straightforward, the high crimes and misdemeanors provision is a bit more ambiguous, at least on its face. Some argue that an actual criminal crime must be committed, but this is not consistent with the founder’s intent or with historical precedent. It is apparent from the Federalist papers and other documents from the debating of the Constitution that the act of impeachment was political in nature and was intended for more than just criminal offenses. Hamilton spoke of the “violation of public trust” and “injuries done to society itself”, much of this noncriminal in nature. The historical application of this process proves this point as well. Most of the cases brought forth against public officials did not actually involve criminal offenses – biased or inappropriate decision making, excessive drunkenness, misusing an office for personal profit, and inducing parties to enter into financial contracts.

As the Trump administration clumsily careens towards authoritarianism and self-destruction, the growing list of moral, political, and criminal indictments grows. The president payed hush money to adult film star, Stormy Daniels, covering up his extramarital affair. This effectively broke campaign finance law. Through the use of his hotel’s and properties around the world, Trump has used the office of the presidency as a yet another way to enrich himself and his family. This president has created the most nepotistic and mob-like administration that most of us have ever seen. There is also plenty of evidence to prove that this president is an out and proud racist with an affection for fascism, even if he is too ignorant to understand the term or its implications. But, perhaps the most alarming reason for his immediate impeachment is his obstruction of justice during the Mueller investigation. While the report did not claim that the president worked with the Russian government during the 2016 election, a clear case of obstruction was put on the table. Ultimately, Mueller left the decision of impeachment in the hands of Congress. Just like the specific findings of this investigation, every action by this president during his time in office has been for his own personal enrichment and surreal narcissistic reality show.

It is true that if impeachment in the House were successful, it is unlikely that a Republican controlled Senate would convict the president on any charges. Pelosi is most likely correct in this assessment. But this does not mean that she should abdicate her responsibility to the Constitution or to the American people. She should force the Republican party to choose the side of accountability and integrity or the side of naked power and deceit. By not holding this president accountable, she and the entire Congress is setting a dangerous precedent, for this president and all future office holders. This only serves to embolden Donald Trump, validating his claims that he is above the law.

When it comes to her own party and its base, Nancy Pelosi is out of touch and dismissive. Four female congresswomen, known as the Squad, have captured the attention of the Democratic party and the entire nation. Each woman – Rashida Tlaib, Ayanna Pressley, Ilhan Omar, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez – has found a way to speak truth to power and question a corrupt status quo in such a simplified way that brings an enormous amount of energy to a base that is yearning for soul and passion. Instead of embracing them, Pelosi has repeatedly dismissed them and their ideas. The Speaker is more than happy to stand beside these women of color on the cover of the Rolling Stone but is not willing to symbolically stand with them when it matters the most. How perfect a representation of the modern Democratic Party that takes for granted the loyalties of communities of color, especially women, instead of truly elevating their work that is of immeasurable importance? Perhaps Pelosi’s qualm with her caucuses left flank, and most specifically the four superwomen of the Squad, is that they represent everything that she is not. Indeed, she was once a young idealistic woman that was criticized for being too far to the left. Now she aids in the propping up of an oppressive and corrupt system, standing in the way of renewed energy for change.

In a Democratic caucus meeting Pelosi told her members not to use Twitter to air their grievances but has used several public interviews to single out and bash many of these women. In one such interview she was quoted as saying, “All these people have their public whatever and their Twitter world… They’re four people and that’s how many votes they get.” How incredibly dismissive and willfully dense at understanding that these four women represent something far more important. They bring with them the power of the various social movements that catapulted them into office, not to mention that they represent thousands of actual constituents. This is most evident with the singling out of Representative Ilhan Omar. Omar has been an outspoken critic of the racist and borderline fascist far-right government of Israel and for that has received relentless criticism from the right and even many Democrats, most notably from the Speaker herself. This on slot of vilification resulted in the spine-chilling ‘Send her back’ chant at a Trump rally in North Carolina, for which Democratic leadership is partly culpable. It seems the Speaker is more willing to belittle four freshman congresswomen then she is at holding a dangerous president accountable.

This is all the more enraging when taken into the context of Pelosi’s last bid for the Speakers gavel. At a time when many Democratic members called for new leadership and with all eyes on the newest progressive members of Congress, they all stood up and proudly cast their votes for the only woman to ever hold the honor. The ‘moderate’ and conservative Democrats – which happen to mostly be white men – that fought to derail her bid for Speaker get a free pass from criticism. Instead, all of her attention is hyper focused on these women that had her back. This protection of the so-called moderates in the party highlights the fallacious idea that the party is moving too far to the left, costing the party elections. Instead, the party should focus on invigorating its base and expanding the electorate to disaffected non-voters.

Nancy Pelosi’s contempt doesn’t seem to just lie with progressive members of Congress, but with important progressive legislation. She has publicly trivialized the Green New Deal, referring to it as the “…green dream, or whatever they call it…” and her office has actively worked against perhaps the most important legislative and ideological issue for the base of the party, Medicare for All. Weeks after Democrats retook the House of Representatives, a top aide for Pelosi urged health policy groups to raise public concerns about Medicare for All. Questioned about this and her disparaging comments about the policy, she touted her support for a single payer system of healthcare early in her career, even claiming she has single payer support signs in her basement from decades ago. This is yet another fitting symbol of entrenched establishment politicians and the modern Democratic party, one that has long forgotten its ideals and traded in its core values for big money and a superficial veneer of empathy for the working class.

Is this insistence on swerving on progressive policies a disagreement on tactic, ideology or simply a lack of courage? Over the years Democratic leadership has shown a real reluctance to fight, instead cowering under the threats and pressures of their Republican counterparts. Democrats are always willing to compromise and meet on GOP terms in the hopes that they will eventually be met halfway, when of course this never occurs. Republicans always tow the party line. The latest example of this is Nancy Pelosi, and originally Chuck Schumer’s, capitulation on a recent border funding bill. She allowed the passage of a Senate bill without any reconciliation or changes, in what she said was an effort to “reluctantly get resources to the children [at the border] fastest.” This was absolutely the wrong move, effectively giving the Trump administration everything and securing nothing in return. Progressive members were correct to oppose the measure and publicly call out their colleagues. There were no protections in the bill that would have guaranteed the humane treatment of the migrants at the border, especially children. After progressive members began to speak out, Pelosi released a letter to Trump urging him to improve the conditions of children and migrants at the border. Her feckless and inept response, “I would deeply appreciate your soonest consideration of the proposals contained in the House legislation…”, shows her lack of courage and frankly a lack of understanding of the critical times we now inhabit. This is not the work of a master legislator.

This is also not the time for ‘civility’ in the traditional Washington beltway sense of the word. The call for civility is often used to undermine dissent and protect a corrupt status quo, as if language and tone are more important or offensive than the policies called into question. What is civility when children are dying at the borders and fellow human beings are treated like animals? What is civility when our democracy is hollowed out to the core by the rich and powerful? What is civility when the only home that we have is literally being killed due to the greed of multi-national corporations that worship at the altar of greed and profits? What is civility when the rhetoric of a white supremacist president directs violence upon sitting members of Congress and already marginalized communities? When the opposition leans into its fascist tendencies and stokes racial and economic violence, we need leadership that is willing to fight in new and audacious ways.

The strange and dangerous times that we find ourselves in call for direct and resolute action, not the current sedated approach that occupies much of the Democratic leadership. With 2020 on the horizon, turnout and energy are going to be crucial. The party is going to need an excited base that believes in its leaders will to fight and knows that its leaders are fighting for them. The 2016 presidential election was a complicated web of understanding, but a large reason for its outcome was a deeply flawed Democratic candidate resulting in a lower turnout of key demographics.

The world, and nature of politics, has drastically changed. The Republican party is an entirely different beast, one that has shown no desire to honestly compromise and work towards real solutions. Indeed, one of the gravest sins of the Obama Era was the president’s belief that the GOP would meet him halfway and work together. This never happened and we should learn from that mistake. When someone shows you who they are, believe them. When the history of this tenable time is written, the enablers of this fascist authoritarian administration and the detractors of humane progressive legislation will be indistinguishable from the very monsters that they superficially and fecklessly ‘resist’. There is no neutrality on a moving bus and Democratic leadership should learn to fight. No one escapes judgment from history, especially when one is in a position of power. Pelosi, it’s time to read the room or get out of the way.

“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.” – Desmond Tutu

Dale Seufert-Navarro