Threatening Revenge Against Nancy Pelosi Is a Bad Idea

The precise allocation of responsibility for persuading President Biden to step down as Democratic nominee remains somewhat contested, but Nancy Pelosi has come to be seen as the mastermind of the plot. As a result, she has become a hate object for a small band of Biden diehards, led by, and perhaps limited to, Anita Dunn.

Yesterday, Politico reported that Dunn, the now-departing senior adviser to Biden, delivered a strangely bitter farewell address. Dunn’s address dwelled at length upon The Godfather, referring to its famous line (which appears in the book but not the film) “revenge is a dish best served cold.”

Today, the Washington Post has more reporting on the incipient vendetta. “A group of Democrats, including within Biden’s orbit and the Democratic National Committee, remain bitterly upset with Pelosi over her public pressure campaign to push Biden out. Some have privately pledged to find ways to diminish Pelosi’s influence in the party after the November election,” the paper explains, citing Dunn as “one Democrat who feels Pelosi betrayed Biden.”

There are several odd and deeply inadvisable aspects to this revenge plot. The first is that we now have enough evidence to conclude that replacing Biden with Kamala Harris was absolutely correct. At the time Democrats debated this question, some suggested Biden was actually performing as well as any other Democrat could or worried that the process of selecting a replacement would be so damaging that it would leave the party worse off.

Those fears, which seemed neurotic and self-serving at the time, are now totally disproven. Democrats are undeniably in better condition with Harris as their nominee. The only basis to complain about the plot to push Biden out is personal pique. A handful of Biden loyalists, such as Dunn, have seen their influence diminish. For them to remain angry is an announcement they don’t care about the Democratic Party at all and are entirely focused on their individual status and income.

Second, Pelosi is powerful, famously so. She was more powerful than Biden’s loyalists before he quit the race. (That’s one reason why he quit). With Biden out, the gap in power is vastly larger.

Indeed, the whole reason Pelosi has become the face of the anti-Biden plot is the assumption she is an all-powerful operator. Perhaps this reputation is somewhat mythical, but her responsibility for pushing out Biden and her powers of manipulation are two assumptions predicated on each other. If you believe Pelosi must have been behind the plot against Biden, then you are assuming she commands vast, terrifying powers. If she can singlehandedly take out 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 dawns on the Bruce Wayne employee in The Dark Knight, who discovers his boss is Batman and decides to blackmail him before realizing why this could backfire.

Attempting revenge on a legendarily influential behind-the-scenes operator is at best quixotic. The only possible chance of success would be to use the element of surprise, which, given that they’ve announced their plan through the media, is now forfeit.

Any political operative who believes publicly threatening a vendetta against Pelosi in retaliation for her helping to save the Democratic Party from certain defeat is sending the clearest possibly signal they have no business working in politics.