Barbara Lee is the representative of California’s 13th congressional district. Her policy agenda is as liberally progressive as one can imagine it. Lee supports government funding of developing renewable energy. She was one of only 54 House representatives who voted against President Trump’s massive increase in military spending (H.R.5515), which Pelosi voted in favor of. Barbara Lee voted against the USA PATRIOT Improvement and Reauthorization Act in 2005, which renewed the already unconstitutional PATRIOT Act of 2001, another piece of legislation Lee voted nay on. She was also an outspoken opponent of the 2003 Iraq War. Lee votes progressive because unlike Pelosi, she doesn’t take campaign contributions from defense contractors such as Boeing, nor corporate monopolies such as Amazon or Alphabet Inc. (the owners of Google and YouTube).
Nancy Pelosi is a politician who has been completely and utterly bought out by corporate interests. She refuses to support “Medicare for All”, despite it being supported by 84.5% of Democrats and even 51% of Republicans. This is likely due to the $11,318.00 she’s taken from Blue Cross Blue Shield and $12,250.00 she’s taken from the American Hospital Association. Furthermore, here biggest campaign donor is Facebook, who has lately been in hot water for messing with the personal data of the website’s users.
One might look at the Democrats’ victory in taking back the House in the 2018 midterm elections and as ask, “Why does Nancy Pelosi need to be replaced if Democrats took back the House under her?” Many of the Democrats that won in the House were unapologetically progressive, such as Alexandria Ocassio-Cortez in New York’s 14th district and Rashida Tlaib in Michigan’s 13th district. In fact, Pelosi was rather alarmed when Cortez won an upset victory in her primary against incumbent corporate Democrat, Joe Crowley. Cortez even joined a group a protestor in Nancy Pelosi’s office demanding she create a Green New Deal committee to help fight manmade climate change. Pelosi clearly won’t be too excited when these two, along with other progressive Democrats become part of the 116th Congress in early 2019.
Barbara Lee is a progressive very much in the vain of Cortez and Tlaib. Lee has plenty of experience in public office, serving in the House of Representatives since the late 1990s. If Barbara Lee becomes Speaker of the House, then Democrats could become reenergized to the point where they can take back both the Senate and White House in 2020. If Pelosi becomes Speaker of the House, her method of “compromising” with Republicans -which equates to giving in to all their demands- won’t make Democratic and independent voters so enthusiastic about voting in the 2020 elections. This could mean another four years of a Trump-run White House, which would likely doom the Republic America’s Founding Father’s worked so hard to create. President Trump does support Pelosi becoming Speaker of the House, after all.
Sources: Congress.org, Votesmart.org, Intelligencer