The exact allocation of responsibility for persuading President Biden to step down as the Democratic nominee remains somewhat disputed, but Nancy Pelosi has been seen as the mastermind behind the plot. As a result, she has become an object of hatred for a small group of Biden diehards, led by, and perhaps limited to, Anita Dunn.
Yesterday, Politico reported that Dunn, the now-departing senior adviser to Biden, gave a strangely bitter farewell speech. Dunn’s address lingered on The Godfatherreferring to its famous line (which appears in the book but not the film) “revenge is a dish best served cold.”
Today, Washington Post has more reporting on the nascent vendetta. “A group of Democrats, including in Biden’s inner circle and the Democratic National Committee, remain bitterly upset with Pelosi over her public pressure campaign to oust Biden. Some have privately vowed to find ways to reduce Pelosi’s influence in the party after the November election,” explains newspaper, citing Dunn as “a Democrat who feels Pelosi betrayed Biden.”
There are several strange and deeply ill-advised aspects of this revenge plot. The first is that we now have enough evidence to conclude that it was absolutely correct to replace Biden with Kamala Harris. At the time Democrats debated this issue, some suggested that Biden was actually performing as well as any other Democrat could, or worried that the process of choosing a replacement would be so damaging that it would put the party at a disadvantage.
That fear, which seemed neurotic and self-serving at the time, is now totally disproved. Democrats are undeniably better off with Harris as their nominee. The only The basis for complaining about the plot to oust Biden is personal pique. A handful of Biden loyalists, such as Dunn, have seen their influence wane. For them to remain angry is a message that they don’t care about the Democratic Party at all and are entirely focused on their individual status and income.
Second, Pelosi is powerful, famous. She was more powerful than Biden’s loyalists before he left the race. (That’s one of the reasons he quit). With Biden out, the gap in power is much wider.
Indeed, the whole reason Pelosi has become the face of the anti-Biden plot is the assumption that she is an all-powerful operator. Perhaps this reputation is somewhat mythical, but her responsibility for ousting Biden and her powers of manipulation are two assumptions based on each other. If you believe that Pelosi must have been behind the plot against Biden, then you assume that she has enormous, terrifying powers. If she can single-handedly impeach the President of the United States, she can probably handle you.
At the risk of mixing pop culture metaphors, the logical problem is similar to the realization that occurs to the Bruce Wayne employee in The Dark Knightwho discovers his boss is Batman and decides to blackmail him before realizing why this could backfire.
Trying to get revenge on a legendarily influential behind-the-scenes operator is quixotic at best. The only possible chance of success would be to use the element of surprise, which, having announced their plan through the media, is now lost.
Any political operative who thinks publicly about threatening a vendetta against Pelosi in retaliation for her role in saving the Democratic Party from certain defeat is sending the clearest signal that they have no business in politics.