Nancy Pelosi to Leftist NYU Student: We’re Capitalists, Deal With It
NYU Sophomore Trevor Hill provoked a telling insight into the Democratic Party’s future from House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) CNN Town Hall hosted by Jake Tapper last night. Pelosi’s response to Hill caused a buzz among leftists and NYU Students on Facebook, Twitter and Reddit.
After apologizing for going off-script, Hill presented Pelosi with a Harvard University poll showing millennials’ distaste for capitalism. Hill, who supported Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary and voted for Jill Stein in November, then asked the former Speaker of the House whether she saw an opportunity for the Democratic Party to move left. He suggested “a more stark contrast to right-wing economics,” might be the best route for the Democrats to attract millennial voters, similar to how the Republican party moved to the ideological right after the 2008 presidential election to court large turnout among their base.
“I have to say, we’re capitalists, that’s just the way it is,” Pelosi responded with a chuckle. “However, we do think that capitalism is not necessarily meeting the needs with the income inequality that we have in our country.”
The veteran Democratic lawmaker then explained what she feels are the virtues of the American center-left economic approach, mentioning the previous system of “stakeholder capitalism” which has been replaced with “shareholder capitalism” and emphasized the utility of the safety net.
“We’re a capitalist system. The free market is — is a place that can do good things,” Pelosi said, before name-checking economist and philosopher Adam Smith and fellow Democratic Representative Eric Swallwell.
Hill, who was originally slated to ask a light-hearted question with a VEEP reference about her most embarrassing moment on the campaign trail, was left unsatisfied by the answer. “It sounded, essentially, like someone saying, ‘Capitalism works in theory, not in practice,” he wrote to NYU Local late Tuesday night. “And not only that, but the question was whether there were places, economically speaking, where the Democrats could move left in order to inspire new generations of leftists. But she avoided that altogether,” he added. “It was an interesting answer, but it wasn’t an answer to my question.”
As the Democrats regroup from the election loss, there has been disagreement on how best to react and who is best to lead the fight against Trump. Some, such as Hill and other College Democrats, point to populist, progressive figures such as Keith Ellison, Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders as being the proper leaders for the Party. Pelosi’s response, rife with talking points in coherence with the Democratic Party’s core economic philosophy and message, poured cold water on the idea that Democratic leadership might shift leftward to excite their supporters and younger voters in the coming years.
“She can’t possibly understand where I, or millions of other millennials who are drowning under capitalism, come from,” said Hill of the response, noting she is very wealthy and is attuned to the establishment. “She refused to admit that the Democrats needed to move in a populist direction, which is what so many millions of Americans are crying out for them to do.”
