Nancy Pelosi did not get to be Democratic leader just by smiling pretty and raising money, so it should surprise no one that she might crack you over the head if you cross her. Though she has threatened, this has not happened -- so far. But maybe all that is about to change.
Pelosi is signaling that she intends to punish, or at least not reward, those House Democrats who don't toe the line on important votes. This is causing a bit of a stink among some who worry about their own level of loyalty. But this, like any effort at disciplining Democrats, ought to be a true spectacle, because we are, after all, talking about Democrats.
"Democratic Party discipline used to be an oxymoron, but no longer," quipped a Democratic aide. This is the party of Will Rogers ("I'm not a member of any organized political party, I'm a Democrat") and Zell Miller, the Georgia senator who recently declared the Democrats dead and has been dancing on their grave ever since. This week Miller announced that he will head up "Democrats for Bush" (which means he's dancing in a red tux).
So Pelosi has her work cut out for her. But she must know that. While she is forever touting the diversity of the Democratic caucus as a strength, she knows that the road from diversity to division is a short, straight one.
"Our caucus is different from every other caucus in the Congress," she says. "When I go to the table with the leaders of the caucus, with the president of the United States, we bring the thinking of all of America to that. When we have our conversations among ourselves it is a beautiful sight to behold, because we have the benefit of the thinking of all of America."
And sometimes not so much.
Pelosi and her team are changing the rules on how party members get the plum leadership assignment on subcommittees. The intention is to ensure that representatives understand that life is full of consequences. Members of the superstar committees -- Ways and Means, Appropriations, and Commerce -- will not get those leadership slots if the defect too often.
"If we need someone on a key vote, we want to make sure we have some leverage," a member of the senior leadership told Roll Call's Erin Billings. "We want them to do the right thing."
One vote they have in mind is the pre-Thanksgiving debacle on Medicare.
"That was a vote that defined us as a party," said Pelosi spokesman Brendan Daly. "This was a vote to undermine Medicare, and as a Democrats you shouldn't be voting for it."
In the end, 16 Democrats voted for a measure that won by only five votes. And it's not hard to see why Pelosi was, and remains, furious about the way she lost. Politically, it seemed that the Republicans had snatched a plum Democratic issue right from under her party, using tricks that seem to grow more noxious every day with news that the administration hid the true costs from Congress and that drugs prices have already increased because of the bill.
Before the Medicare overhaul passed 220-215, Pelosi had issued a warning that this was not a vote on which she was giving dispensations. She made a "yes" vote sound like a crime.
"I would certainly encourage Democrats not to be an accomplice to this," she declared back then.
Now with nearly everyone backpedaling on the bill, she at least has the leverage of an "I told you so" as she seeks more cohesion. But Daly insists that Pelosi is not letting out her inner Tom DeLay.
"People understand the need to be unified to be more effective," Daly says. "She always tells people that they should vote their three Cs -- conscience, constituents, and the Constitution -- and then after that you should be with us. She understands better than anybody that sometimes you have to let people go on some issues."
And therein lies the problem. One prominent Democrat said recently that in terms of taking back the House, Democrats ought to de-emphasize cultural issues to allow people to run their campaigns as they see fit.
"As long as people are willing to vote for a Democrat for speaker when they get to Washington, we ought to help them anyway we can," the Democrat said.
In real terms, however, that argues for an expansion of the Zell Miller faction of the party.
"He is loyal to the people who sent him here," said one senior Democratic aide sympathetic to Miller's position, which is that the national Democratic Party has abandoned southern voters.
"Nancy Pelosi and Ted Kennedy can't campaign for Democrats in the South. Nancy Pelosi can't campaign for [Georgia freshman Representative] Jim Marshall -- because it will do more harm than good. If a freshman can't count on the on the leader of his party to help him win, what good is that leader?"
A fair question. But then again, Jim Marshall was one of the Medicare 16.
Terence Samuel is the chief congressional correspondent for U.S. News & World Report. His column about politics appears each week in the online edition of The American Prospect.
