House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi speaking to reporters following her record-breaking filibuster, which lasted eight hours.
On February 7, House of Representatives Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi spoke on the House floor for over eight hours to push for a vote on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, an Obama-era initiative that protects the children of immigrants who came to the United States illegally from being deported. Her filibuster, now the longest one to occur in the House in over a century, represents the goals of the Democratic Party: to fight for the equal rights of all Americans, regardless of their status on paper.
Pelosi’s ultimate goal was to persuade Speaker of the House Paul Ryan to grant the House of Representatives the opportunity to vote on the future of DACA. In order to do this, she used the impending spending bill that was to be voted on following her speech as leverage; the bill would provide funding for the government for two years. After the government shutdown that occurred on January 19 because Congress couldn’t agree on a spending bill, many legislators were eager to enact a more long-term solution to the issue of government funding. The spending bill proposed on February 7 included many Democratic initiatives and priorities, such as infrastructure, disaster relief efforts, child care, and aide for the opioid crisis; however, the bill lacked a promise to preserve DACA, making it quite controversial among the Democratic Party. To help save DACA, Pelosi argued for the program throughout her eight hours at the podium, asking for a debate on the program in exchange for her support of the spending bill.
Though Pelosi’s goals and effort were admirable, her leverage of the spending bill was ultimately an ineffective method to earn a vote on DACA. Many Democrats were already planning on supporting the bill because of its domestic spending plans, so losing Pelosi’s vote didn’t make a large enough difference for Republicans to be persuaded by her argument. Ultimately, her filibuster seemed to not make any concrete progress for the participants of DACA, dubbed the Dreamers. This seemingly ineffective attempt has angered some legislators and citizens at what many believe to be a divided and incompetent Democratic Party.
Currently, the party is divided between legislators who want the kind of economic progress that was included in the spending bill and legislators like Pelosi who want to focus on marginalized groups like the Dreamers whose status and rights are being questioned by the Trump administration. Moreover, the Democrats are divided between strong oppositionists who believe that they must vote against all Republican bills and moderates who want to focus on making some progress by negotiating with the Republicans. In this case, Pelosi represented the oppositionists, while other Democrats just wanted to pass the spending bill first, thereby accomplishing several economic goals of the party, and then move onto a long-term debate on DACA. These conflicting sides illustrate the paramount dilemma of the Democratic Party: a lack of unification.
Even though Pelosi didn’t achieve her terminal goal, we must still admire and support her overwhelmingly difficult accomplishment. To stand and speak without a break for over eight hours is a feat that takes vast amounts of courage and determination––even more so to speak in support of the Dreamers.
However, the primary goal of the Democratic Party must be unification. The party must be undivided in support of the American people in order to win back a Congressional majority in the 2018 midterms. If the Democrats win back the House and Senate in November, they will gain the power needed to make the kind of change Pelosi fought for in her powerful filibuster, and more.
