I am typically loathe to quote from the Robert Novak rumor mill, but this bit about Nancy Pelosi supposedly backing Rahm Emanuel for Senate should Obama become President is particularly interesting:
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is reported to be privately talking about Rep. Rahm Emanuel, the House Democratic Caucus chairman, as the next senator from Illinois if Sen. Barack Obama wins the presidential election.
Emanuel told this column he is not interested in the Senate and has not talked to Pelosi about it. He also suggested that Pelosi might be saying she would regret losing him from her leadership team. However, the source quoting the speaker indicated she was enthusiastic about Emanuel's elevation to the Senate.
A footnote: The same source said Pelosi indicated that House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer would be her eventual successor as speaker, even though she opposed his election to the second-ranking leadership position. Emanuel has been widely mentioned as the speaker of the next decade.
I am not ready to jump on Pelosi for this, for several reasons:
- It simply might not be true.
- Moving Emanuel out of the House would also take him out of the House leadership. Rahm Emanuel is one of the few people who would actually lose power by moving to the Senate. As such, such a move would be fine with me.
- Moving Emanuel out of the House would open up the potential for a progressive, post-Pelosi speaker. Sure, Hoyer is listed here as a successor to Pelosi, but he is actually one year older than Pelosi. Clyburn is the same age as Pelosi. As such, right now Emanuel, who is 19 years younger than Pelosi and Clyburn, is clearly in line to be Speaker, starting sometime in the middle of next decade.
- Moving Emanuel out of the House would open up the potential for a progressive replacement in his House seat. Back in 2002, he narrowly won his primary against a grassroots progressive, from what I understand.
- In 2010, if he were in the Senate, Emanuel would undoubtedly receive multiple primary challenges for his seat, at least one of whom would probably be progressive. So, his place in the Senate would not even be a guarantee.
In short, moving Emanuel to the Senate following an Obama victory might actually be very good from a progressive movement perspective. It certainly presents us with more possibilities than we have right now, given that a primary challenge against Emanuel would be one of the longest longshots around. So, even if Pelosi actually is pushing Emanuel for Senate following an Obama victory, I'm not necessarily opposed to it myself. He is in line to run the Democratic caucus in the House in a few years, and moving him to a different chamber would avert that possibility well ahead of time.
So, like I said, while I usually would avoid linking to Robert Novak, this column raises interesting questions about the future Democratic leadership in the House, and Obama's potential replacement in the Senate.
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