Three months before what promise to be brutal House elections, Speaker Nancy Pelosi is again the Happy Campaigner, vowing to defend “every grain of sand” of what she’s built in Congress and predicting this August will prove kinder to her Democrats than a year ago.
“They kept hope alive last August,” she said of rank-and-file lawmakers who weathered stormy town meetings and still came back to help her enact health care reform. “Last year, they had to defend a bill that wasn’t even settled upon,” Pelosi told POLITICO. Now, House Democrats are going home for the summer recess with a specific “portfolio of accomplishments” — and a gentle reminder from her that “all politics is personal.”
The massive health care overhaul has morphed into a “patients’ bill of rights;” Wall Street reform is “consumer protection.”
“Nobody wants you to go out there and talk about legislation; they want to talk about the impact it has on them,” Pelosi said. “As Tip O’Neill says, ‘All politics is local.’ I always say, ‘All politics is personal.’”
Full story: Speaker defends troubled majority – David Rogers – POLITICO.com
