

How Nancy Pelosi Saved the NSA Surveillance Program - joering2
http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/07/25/how_nancy_pelosi_saved_the_nsa_surveillance_program

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nostromo
Even though this didn't pass, it's still bad for Pelosi. If you're minority
leader and you don't even manage to get half of your party to vote against an
amendment introduced by a republican, despite extensive lobbying, what good
are you?

There has to be at least one tech industry person with beaucoup bucks and an
interest in politics that can take on Pelosi. Every Democrat insider would
oppose a primary challenge, but I can imagine a scenario where someone with a
lot of resources could bypass the establishment and speak directly to voters.

Jerry Yang comes to mind. He could perhaps even mobilize the Taiwanese
population in SF.

~~~
rdl
I think the catch-22 is that you'd need a lot of money to run outside of the
political system, but SF voters are anti-capitalist (at least, a fair number
are) and wouldn't elect a rich person. Of course, Pelosi has $58mm, but she
didn't earn it through something big and impressive, but through normal
sketchy congressional investment dealings.

~~~
rayiner
Her husband is a businessman that owns a real estate firm.

~~~
rdl
She made a lot of money from various non-public stock deals, such as Visa,
which were pretty shady. A lot of people in congress do.

Marital wealth is less "obvious" to voters. Voting in a person who actually
made a bunch of money through business is much more overt. Inherited wealth is
also safe by comparison.

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cek
Techies in NoCal think they carry a lot of weight. If they really do, she will
be voted out of office next election. If she gets elected again it will
indicate either tech hasn't the voice it thinks, doesn't vote, or are confused
on what's important.

~~~
hkmurakami
I hear ya, but will a credible opponent arise in that district? no democrat
will run against her given her clout. is any republican electable in sf?

~~~
refurb
Last voter data I saw has registered Republican's in the low teens as a
percentage of registered voters.

The only way I could see a Republican winning SF is if he/she were a fiscal
conservative/social libertarian.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Last voter data I saw has registered Republican's in the low teens as a
> percentage of registered voters.

Not that high; per current registration data [1], 37,719 registered
Republicans of 437,529 total registered voters, so Republicans are 8.62%. Low
teens is about what the typical Republican running in San Francisco gets on
election day

> The only way I could see a Republican winning SF is if he/she were a fiscal
> conservative/social libertarian.

If the political mood in San Francisco was running in a way that social
libertarian positions were strong enough that they'd get enough liberal voters
to hold their breath and vote for a fiscal conservative, then a left-
libertarian would probably end up as the Democratic candidate in the general
election, and win. (Although the main effect, given the way California's "open
primary" works, would likely be a contested primary among Democrats resulting
in the two candidates that make it to the general election both being
Democrats.)

I suppose, though, if you the the surge of social libertarianism happens
_after_ the primary but before the general election, and the Democratic
candidate _isn 't_ a social libertarian, you _might_ end up with a chance for
the Republican. But that's a pretty freakish scenario.

[1]
[http://www.sfelections.org/tools/election_data/](http://www.sfelections.org/tools/election_data/)

~~~
dllthomas
Also note that's "the typical (republican running in San Francisco)", as
distinct from "(the typical republican) running in San Francisco", who would
likely get even fewer votes.

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skirunman
I live in SF and have met Ms. Pelosi. I am against 90% of her policies. I
tweeted this today @NancyPelosi Shame on you for voting to continue to fund
the NSA and unwarranted spying on all Americans. The only answer is a
constitutional amendment to add term limits for both houses. I'd like to see 2
- 6 year terms for Senators and 4 - 2 year terms for Reps. Our legislators
were not meant to have jobs for life. Do your public service and then get back
to the real world.

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jjjeffrey
> "Well, I didn't vote for the PATRIOT Act the last time it was up," she said
> today, at her weekly press briefing. "I don't want anybody to misunderstand
> a vote against the Amash resolution yesterday."

Er, I don't think there is any way to misunderstand a vote. It's really as
simple as it gets. I doubt that some supposed underlying strategy holds more
truth than the vote itself.

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ajays
People can bitch and moan all they want on HN, but how many actually took the
time to call her office? I did and the aide wrote down my support of the
amendment. If the 1000s of readers of HN had all called, she probably may not
have voted against it (but may still have convinced others to do so).

What we need is someone to run against her. Someone sane and not a cuckoo.
She's old-school, represents the establishment, etc.; someone young, tech
savvy and willing to spend the time could put up a tough fight.

Anyone thinking of running against her: I can promise you that I will work for
your campaign for free and pound the pavement like crazy. Let's do it!

~~~
goldfeld
Hey now, why isn't there a platform where people can get in-kind crowdfunding
for campaigns? Just like open source projects get a lot more help in terms of
man-hours than money, so could people from the tech community running for
office.

~~~
ajays
That's a good idea: crowdfunded elections for the underdogs.

~~~
lancewiggs
DailyKos has been doing this for years.

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fsck--off
To clear Foreign Policy's lightbox, use this bookmarklet:

    
    
      javascript:%20(function(){document.getElementById("TB_window").style.display%20=%20"none";document.getElementById("TB_overlay").style.display%20=%20"none";}());
    

Courtesy of Sean McLemon (HN username smcl):

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5644021](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5644021)

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donretag
Very gutsy move considering her congressional district is San Francisco. Are
there enough local techies to vote her out of office, or is the anti-
Republican bias too high?

~~~
rdl
A Republican has basically no chance in San Francisco. (In local politics,
it's kind of amusing. Anywhere but SF, Gavin Newsom would have been a
Republican (except on the LGBT issue); basically in SF politics the Democrats
are the right wing, and the Greens are the left wing; the Republicans are
essentially as relevant locally as a party like UKIP is in the UK).

A Democratic primary challenger won't work because she is minority leader.

The best option is probably a Green Party or other left third party, overtly
allied with the Democratic Party in the house otherwise.

~~~
bratsche
Can you explain why it matters to SF that she's minority leader? Why is that
reason enough to not allow a Democrat challenger?

~~~
smsm42
Because party leader being voted out by local voters would be a huge fail for
the whole party. Which means any challenger would have to work against his own
party, not with it. Chance of winning a challenge to an entrenched opponent
while your own party is working against you is very low, and how you can
actually be a candidate from Democrats if the Democrat party does not support
you? If you're really that independent, you should be running with the other
party then. Being in the party implies some cooperation with the party
structures.

Of course, in politics many weird things are possible, and people can win
election of a party seat despite the party not supporting them. But doing it
in Democratic stronghold against one of the leaders of the party... Highly
unlikely.

~~~
dllthomas
But potentially with the massive support of the tech community.

~~~
rdl
Which is maybe helpful for money, but not really for votes. Much stronger
voting blocs in SF are LGBT, "traditional liberal", union, Chinese, and
hispanic/latino.

I think the active opposition by a challenger's party would make it harder to
run as a democrat in the primaries (where the party can fuck a candidate a lot
more) vs. in the main election. A viable third-party candidate could probably
get the 10-15% Republican vote as well as ideally strong wins in some of the
major blocs (by being latino, gay, etc. himself or herself), which might be
enough in the general election.

Pelosi herself is also rich ($58mm net worth), and has the full backing of the
party, so it would be difficult for a tech-financed third party candidate to
really win. OTOH, SF is a relatively small city, so a grass roots campaign
shouldn't be expensive with lots of volunteer labor.

~~~
dllthomas
I don't think tech could do it alone, but I don't think party opposition from
outside would dominate when money is taken out of the mix. It would, quite
obviously, need to involve getting the voters in the district on board.

Note that with CA's current system, the top two vote-getters go on regardless
of party, so the dynamics are a bit different... I'm honestly not sure exactly
how it all shakes out, but I don't know that anyone else is either.

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od2m
Hey San Francisco-- do the nation a favor and stop voting for this disaster.
She's an embarrassment.

~~~
whyenot
Maybe the people of San Francisco aren't single issue voters. She has been a
very strong supporter of gay rights, for example.

~~~
staunch
As would be virtually any replacement.

~~~
rdl
Actually, that might be a great way to get a third-party challenger in SF --
so far there have only ever been two openly gay people elected to congress as
non-incumbents (i.e. they came out while already in office, but got re-
elected), in Florida and Wisconsin. If anywhere is a good place for an openly
gay person to run for congress, it's SF. I assume an actual gay or lesbian
person would have higher LGBT cred than Pelosi.

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pstuart
Submitting links that are subscriber-only kind of sucks. Yes, one can do the
googlebot trick but one shouldn't have to.

~~~
Pwnguinz
It's merely a JS based modal box. You can use your web browser's
devtool/inspector to delete the two divs, one for the black transparent
overlay, and one for the sign-up modal.

~~~
adriand
Or you can simply load (or refresh) the page and when you can see the article,
but before the overlay appears, hit the stop button in your browser.

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appleflaxen
The American public is losing the battle of words. We need to start calling
these policies what they are: fascist

Pelosi and others who support the NSA surveillance dragnet are American
fascists.

~~~
jacoblyles
My understanding of historical fascism is that it includes a strong sense of
national identity combined with a muscular state and usually some sort of
narrative of national superiority.

When's the last time someone flew an American flag un-ironically in downtown
SF? We're nowhere close to fascist.

~~~
shredfvz
When's the last time you made a politically incorrect statement to an American
citizen living outside of SF?

At first I agreed with you, but on a broader basis your sentiment just doesn't
match up with reality.

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codex
It's a shame the article doesn't go into why she worked to scuttle this
amendment even though she can sometimes be a harsh critic of intelligence
programs.

~~~
hkmurakami
my thought exactly. even the letter to the president seems like a toll made
precisely to respond to press inquiries like this one

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Stwerner
Do any of you think it would it be useful to have a site where it would be
possible to donate time to different campaigns on certain sides of issues?

Imagine if you had a place where you could donate engineering time to a
campaign for someone who voted to defund the NSA, or donate your time to the
campaign of someone who is running against a rep who voted against it.

Think... a marketplace where you could donate your expertise, be it
engineering, SEO, SEM, design, etc to campaigns on the sides of issues you
care about.

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hkmurakami
the article states that pelosi is wary and concerned about intelligence, but
doesn't give any real concrete examples. the only thing that can be construed
as such would be "I didn't vote for prism last time it was up" which doesn't
mean all that much to me.

is she actually a surveillance skeptic or is this a facade? her recent actions
don't supple this claim at all.

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fpgeek
Sigh. Other than from a purely theatrical perspective, the vote wasn't close
at all. Even if you think this amendment could have magically gotten past the
inevitable Senate filibuster (and I don't see how), the margin in the House
was nowhere near the two-thirds majority required to override the guaranteed
veto.

~~~
dllthomas
The veto isn't guaranteed - this is a defense appropriations bill, and the
President can't veto just this amendment. The eventual alternative without an
override, if both sides stick to their guns, is no funding for _any_ NSA
activities (or drone strikes, or anything else...).

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yankoff
.. and there's a street in SF named after her: Nancy Pelosi Dr.

