Pelosi on Medicare for All; Pelosi Redirects Party on Impeachment
KING: The speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, today again finds herself trying to steer her party away from the demands of its most vocal activists. Medicare for all is her topic this time. Her nudge to the liberal base came in an interview with "The Washington Post." And it's clear, just like her recent "don't' go there" message on impeachment, that Pelosi is worried about giving 2020 messaging gifts to President Trump and the Republicans. "They," meaning the president and Republicans, called Medicare for all socialism. Well, here's Pelosi's take. Quote, I'm agnostic. Show me how you think you can get there. I think it's the Affordable Care Act. And if that leads to Medicare for all, that may be the path. You can't get to Medicare for all unless you have some of the resources of the Affordable Care Act. Rachael Bade was part of that interview with the speaker. Now, you can read that and just look at the words and it's more of an, oh, let's see. Or you can read that, as I read that, as, slow down, everybody. We're not doing -- we're not brining to the floor a big, sweeping, disruptive overhaul of the American health care system. That would be a gift to them. Let's just strengthen and fix Obamacare.</s>BADE: Yes, it's definitely the latter. And Pelosi has -- she's been doing some really interesting things in the House over the past few weeks in that she really is throwing up this caution sign to the entire party in the 2020 presidential field and saying, look, guys, you can't go too far to the left or that could potentially hurt us in taking out Trump, or upend their majority in 2020 in terms of keeping the House. What she was saying about Medicare for all I thought was interesting because the word "agnostic" stands in stark contrast to, you know, the presidential candidates sort of tripping over themselves to try to say that they are the biggest proponent for Medicare for all. But she doesn't think that Medicare for all will actually help Americans in the same way that the Affordable Care Act. And, remember, just a few weeks ago Pelosi sought -- brought in some big guns when she brought president -- former President Obama to talk to some of these new, high-profile freshmen who are supporting Medicare for all and his caution to them was, listen, you've got to look at the price tag. You've got to be honest with voters about how much this is going to cost. And you have to realize that even though you might have a liberal, bold idea, when you actually look at what it's going to cost to pay for something like that, you might not have support from the far left wing of the base.</s>KING: And so there's two ways to look at it. The policy perspective, if it's big and huge and disruptive, if you could do it -- number one, the Republicans still control the Senate, so Nancy Pelosi is kind of like Mitch McConnell in the Senate, don't make us vote on these things, Mr. President, because it's not going to happen anyway. The other thing is, Nancy Pelosi lost her gavel and the Democrats lost the majority when they passed Obamacare. Ten years later, Obamacare is actually an asset for the Democrats if you look at the 2018 election results. Her point is, let's stick with what we just proved works.</s>JOHNSON: Yes, Nancy Pelosi lost over 60 House seats in 2010 over this issue. So she -- she has really sacrificed to get that legislation intact and to become a permanent feature of the health care system. The other thing is, the Democrats can end -- Pelosi can already see how President Trump is using this issue in the early days of the campaign. He's saying the Democrats themselves think Obamacare is flawed. They want to replace it with Medicare for all, and that's socialist. Meanwhile, the president has also stepped on it on health care and said, we're going to replace Obamacare, even though Republicans don't have a plan. So I hear Pelosi saying, let's keep the focus on Trump and the fact that he's calling to repeal Obamacare, even though Republicans can't themselves unite behind a plan without creating a distraction ourselves.</s>KING: And what she's also trying to say to the candidates and to her own members is, don't decide what do based on Twitter. Don't decide what to do based on how the activist base that is emailing you and calling you. Think about the entire country. Think about the big map. But look at the 2020 candidates. If you go to their websites, those who are all in on Medicare for all, Congresswoman Gabbard, Senator Gillibrand, Senator Harris, Senator Sanders, Senator Warren, Marianne Williamson, Andrew Yang. Supporting at least a version of Medicare for all, Cory Booker, Pete Buttigieg, Castro, Inslee, O'Rourke. The three Democrats who say, no, no, it's too much, it's too liberal, or the country's not ready for it, Delaney, Hickenlooper and Senator Klobuchar. So you have seen this already playing out in the field. Pelosi's trying to put this train on a different track.</s>KUCINICH: She also knows who brought the majority back, and it's not at the liberal members, it's the members from these seats that are middle of the road. Trump -- seats Trump won in 2016. So -- and they're not going to go full on into Medicare for all. Actually, you heard them when this -- when these plans first started coming out and when you -- I think Kamala Harris was the first one to really make it explode into an issue, those members, those blue dog new Dem members were like, ah, I'm more ACA, let's slow down.</s>KING: And someone she's been, so far, she's been able to manage this. Rashida Tlaib still says I'm going to introduce my impeachment resolution. The speaker says, fine, it's not going to go anywhere. You can go on cable television and talk about if you want, you can introduce it, the committee's not going to act on it. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, listen to this exchange here. Here's the speaker on impeachment and one of her most prominent liberal members.</s>REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA): They wanted me to impeach President Bush for the Iraq War. I didn't believe in it then. I don't believe it in now. It divides the country. Unless there's some conclusive evidence that takes us to that place.</s>REP. ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ (D-NY): I know a lot of members in the caucus have a different opinion, but that's why we caucus.</s>MANU RAJU, CNN SENIOR CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: You have a different opinion?</s>OCASIO-CORTEZ: I -- I -- I happen to, yes.</s>KING: We watched this play out when the Republicans were in charge and it was the Tea Party and the other conservative challenges to John Boehner and then to Paul Ryan. Is she managing in this better so far in the sense that she has many critics within the conference, but so far she seems to still be in charge. There are often questions about whether Boehner or Ryan were actually in charge.</s>PARTI: She does seem to have more control over her caucus than Paul Ryan ever did. But I think the problem for Pelosi here is that as the 2020 election cycle heats up for the Democratic primary there, it's a race to the left. As, you know, as you said, it's not really those far left seats that are going to be ever in trouble. It's the moderate candidates that she has to keep in mind. So just balancing what's going on, on a national stage, with what's happening on a district level, is something that's going to get harder and harder for her to imagine.</s>JOHNSON: The other thing that I think will be challenging for her is that whoever emerges as the Democratic nominee will inevitably become the party's chief messenger.</s>PARTI: Yes.</s>JOHNSON: And that could really drive the House Democratic caucus -- conference to the left.</s>KING: That might -- that might make it more interesting. As we go to break, I just want to quickly -- John Delaney's a former congressman. He's running for president. I just want to show you this shirt. He says -- it's a t-shirt. This debate plays out on the front. It says, I'm not the socialist. On the back it says, I am the Democratic capitalist. So this is a -- this is an issue out on the campaign trail for the candidates well-known and not so well-known. Up next, a good jobs report makes for a happy president, but does the president have a reason to worry about the economy as he heads into 2020?