As the new session of Congress commenced, Nancy Pelosi, who is in her final two-year term, was elected House speaker with a narrower Democratic majority, which may present her with myriad challenges.
The only woman to hold the speaker's seat, Nancy Pelosi, is now 80. With 216 votes, she was elected again. A two more than present majority vote difference, notwithstanding an uproar from both the progressive and moderate wings of democrats for a new generation of leadership.
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After the voting, in a speech, Pelosi said, "Now is a time for our nation to heal. Our most urgent priority will continue to be defeating the coronavirus." Adding that "the pandemic has pulled back the curtain on even worsened disparities in our economy and our society."
Republican House leader Kevin McCarthy was nominated to run against her. He got 209 votes. Subsequently, McCarthy gave a tight partisan speech where he criticizes the last Congress as too unfocussed by reformist priorities to govern effectively.
Pelosi has been the Democrats' main halt for incumbent President Donald Trump for the past two years. That helped keep them unified despite the ideological spread from progressives to centrists. Pelosi's challenge for the next term is to keep the party trooping behind President-elect Joe Biden's plan.
Even with two seats still open, the Democratic lead has shrunk to 222-211, after the November election gave Republican gains.
With her Democratic Party, Pelosi was unchallenged for her fourth, nonconsecutive, speakership term. The most vocal for fresh leadership, young, recently elected progressives all voted for her, including Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
After the vote, Ocasio-Cortez said, "We are just an extremely slim amount of votes away from risking the Speakership to the Republican Party, and this is bigger than any one of us. When the Republican Party is attempting an electoral coup and trying to overturn the results of our election, this is not just about being united as a party, it's about being united as people who, with basic respect for rule of law."
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Jamaal Bowman, a progressive from New York, who won a seat in the 2020 election by ousting a veteran Democrat, said, "Our country needs stability right now and it is really important for the Democratic Party to come together." He added that after dialogues with Pelosi, he is "very, very confident" that progressive urgencies such as Medicare for All and the Green New Deal will be conveyed to the floor.
Pelosi did agonize among Democrats who embody strike districts with substantial numbers of Republican electorates. For instance, Maine's Jared Golden voted for Senator Tammy Duckworth, and Pennsylvania's Conor Lamb voted for a member of Pelosi's leadership team New York's Hakeem Jeffries.
Three other Democrats who didn't vote for Pelosi as a speaker, like Golden and Lamb, were New Jersey's Mikie Sherrill, Michigan's Elissa Slotkin, and Virginia's Abigail Spanberger.
In a statement, Spanberger said, "Last Congress, I kept my promise to vote for new leadership upon my swearing-in - and in this Congress, I remain consistent in my commitment to ushering in new leadership."
