Motley Moose – Archive

Netroots Nation is a yearly gathering of left of center online organizations and bloggers. This year’s convention is in San Jose CA.

Saturday’s lunch keynote is entitled “Ask the Leader”, a question and answer session with House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi. It is scheduled to start at 12:00pm Pacific (1pm Mountain, 2pm Central, 3pm Eastern).

From the NN13 schedule:

Ask the Leader

Keynote; Sat, 06/22/2013 – 12:00pm, Exhibit Hall 2

Join moderator Zerlina Maxwell and House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, in a substantive discussion about current issues and legislative process. Tweet your questions with the hashtag #AskPelosi in advance or live during the session.

Boxed lunches generously sponsored by the Sierra Club.

Led by: Zerlina Maxwell

Panelists: House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi

Zerlina Maxwell:

Zerlina Maxwell is a political analyst and contributing writer for EBONY.com, theGrio.com, and Feministing.com. She writes about national politics, candidates, and specific policy and culture issues including domestic violence, sexual assault, victim blaming and gender inequality. She has consulted with the United States Department of State to promote the use of social media by students in the West Bank. Her writing has also appeared in JET Magazine, on CNN.com, The Huffington Post, The American Prospect, TheRoot.com Salon.com, and RawStory.com. She is also a frequent guest on Make It Plain with Mark Thompson on Sirius XM Left and on Fox News. (Twitter)

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Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi:

Nancy Pelosi is the Democratic Leader of the House of Representatives in the 113th Congress. From 2007 to 2011, she served as the first woman Speaker of the House and is the first woman in American history to lead a major political party in Congress. Leader Pelosi has represented San Francisco, California’s 12th District, for 26 years.

Thank you for all you have done for the people of this country during your legislative career. Thank you for being a strong and effective Speaker of the House for the past four years. Thank you for standing strong for policies that would help all Americans, not just a favored few. Thank you for all of the bills you ushered through the last two congresses, whether they eventually became law or not. Thank you for being the President’s strong right-hand during the fight for health care reform. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Sincerely yours,

Dem-leaning Independent voter

** UPDATE **

Nancy Pelosi has announced she will seek the Minority Leader position.

Read her letter after the jump

I think this morning is the first quiet time I’ve had to really sit down and think about our achievement on HCR Sunday evening. That night, I was too caught up in the thrill of victory to think about how we got there. Monday night I was out of town chaperoning my kid brother at an eardrum-shattering post-hardcore concert, and afterward, I spent most of Tuesday grappling with the epiphany that I feel much older in the wake of being amidst all those rowdy, loud, carefree kids than I’ve ever felt before… So it wasn’t until this morning that I got a chance to really sit in my home in solitude and quiet and mull over the process and the implications of this accomplishment. I am awash with emotions, and the only thing to which I can liken this feeling is the way I felt in the days and weeks following the 2008 elections. Yet in some ways, for me, this is a more stunning triumph still — I have, after all, been an advocate of health care reform for far longer than I’ve been a supporter of Barack Obama.

But as my mind wanders, the feeling I keep coming back to is gratitude. There are a lot of people to thank — a lot of people who had a hand in the passage of HCR. But the name that stands out foremost is Nancy Pelosi.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has successfully reenergized many among the disillusioned Left, declaring that health care reform is not in fact dead, as some of the more cynical voices among us may have come to fear. At this point, the confusion over what’s going on with HCR has become thoroughly discouraging to many who have spent the last few months (or years) championing the cause. The debate became muddled early on in the midst of GOP outrage and hysteria, and as the process progressed, the Left split along ideological lines. We were having enough trouble when we were largely united, and the growing number of divisions have simply confused the issue further.

And though I personally am fond of the president, I still feel that his lack of leadership on health care has been damaging in the long run, and possibly his largest failing thus far. Mixed and ambiguous messages from the administration about key components of the package like the public option only helped to muddy the debate. The lack of vocal support for progressives in Congress and the eagerness to praise disappointing compromises with conservadems has frustrated the liberal and progressive blogosphere to no end, and understandably so. Some among us, myself included, still believe that the better path to HCR would have been an initial push toward single payer, gradually adjusting and making concessions until we worked our way down to a strong public option, which would then have been seen as the marginal compromise that it really is, rather than the socialist government takeover of health care that the Right likes to pretend it would be.

Then again, hindsight is always 20/20, and if we really wanted a president who would push for single payer to begin with, we should have all voted for Dennis in 2008, now shouldn’t we?