Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) found out over the weekend that the intra-party warfare roiling the Democratic party doesn’t intend to pass her by as a target.
On Saturday, the California Democratic party hosted a convention in San Francisco designed to allow local lawmakers like Pelosi (whose district includes San Francisco) and 2020 Democratic presidential candidates to address a roomful of progressive activists.
The California Democratic party is far more left-leaning than most state parties, and none of the candidates or lawmakers escaped their scorn.
Former Colorado governor John Hickenlooper was nearly booed off the stage when he dared to suggest that “socialism is not the answer” to every ill faced by American lawmakers, according to CNN. As The Daily Wire reported Sunday, Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA), also on her home turf, was accosted by an animal rights activist who jumped on stage and stole her microphone during a Harris question-and-answer sponsored by MoveOn.org.
Even Bernie Sanders (I-VT), clearly the most progressive of the 2020 Democratic candidates, faced criticism from the crowd, Fox News reports.
Local lawmaker Pelosi, though, clearly anticipated a friendly audience, and took the stage Saturday afternoon to update California’s progressive activists on a handful of ongoing Congressional investigations into President Donald Trump’s personal finances and pre-presidential business dealings. When she got to the part of her speech focused on Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report on potential collusion between the Trump 2016 campaign and Russian officials, though, the crowd turned on her.
Pelosi began discussing Trump’s potential “obstruction of justice,” a charge outlined in the Mueller report but subsequently dismissed by the Attorney General’s office, and it wasn’t long before members of the audience were drowning her out, yelling “Impeach! Impeach!”
WATCH:
As Pelosi speaks, some in the crowd yell “Impeach! Impeach!” @TomSteyer, the biggest proponent pushing her and others to begin impeachment of Trump, will speak this afternoon and is expected to challenge Dems on the topic again pic.twitter.com/tPMLeoxGo9
— Christine Mai-Duc (@cmaiduc) June 1, 2019
Pelosi struggled for several minutes before launching back into her speech, looking very uncomfortable.
Pelosi and other long-time Democrats have been the subject of progressive ire lately, after refusing to sign on to articles of impeachment, preferring instead that Democrats treat the 2020 presidential election as a referendum on Trump’s actions, including potential obstruction of justice. Pelosi, Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD), and most recently, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) see impeachment proceedings — that will inevitably cross over into the opening months of the 2020 presidential election — as a gift to Trump, who could use the action as evidence he’s the subject of a Congressional “witch hunt.”
California Democrats are among those leading the charge against Pelosi, and welcomed businessman Tom Steyer to follow Pelosi’s speech. Steyer is, perhaps, the biggest progressive name behind the impeachment push.
There’s one bright, shining light for Pelosi, though: most Democrats aren’t nearly as crazy as California Democrats, and the weekend’s MoveOn.org-sponsored event seemed to feature and celebrate some of the most progressive of the progressive. In addition to heckling speakers and demanding impeachment, the Jewish Journal reports that the group tried to pass a handful of anti-Semitic resolutions, including one that blamed the Israeli government for stoking the flames of anti-Jewish hatred and blamed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for a mass shooting at a Pennsylvania synagogue.