The battle for the leadership of the incoming Democratic majority in the House of Representatives is already a mess. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Creative chaos, well-controlled, is good for a political party. It's where the new energy behind new ideas originates. This remains true as long as that creative chaos doesn't overwhelm the institution and, therefore, the majority's ability to get anything done.

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Shoot enough sodium pentothal into Speaker Paul Ryan, the zombie-eyed granny starver from the state of Wisconsin, and he likely would tell you that he'd have been infinitely better off if every member of the Freedom Caucus had been dropped down a well. This analogy is being applied to the new, young, leftish members of the incoming majority. But they're not the real threat, as we shall see. The real threat was encapsulated on the electric Twitter machine with the hashtag, #FiveWhiteGuys.

(As Tuesday went on, I began to regret my original perception that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's participation in the climate-change gathering in Nancy Pelosi's office was a show-pony move. My mind was changed when I realized that both women had managed the event in such a way that they strengthened their respective brands. AOC maintained her outsider-green street cred, while Pelosi, by not panicking and by reinstating the House climate-change working group, demonstrated—again—her gifts for legislative political strategy. After the episode ended, AOC told the Washington Post: “What we need to show her is that we’re here to back her up.”)

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Alas, it is my painful duty to report that the #FiveWhiteGuys are led by Seth Moulton, congresscritter from the Sixth Congressional District here in the Commonwealth (God save it!), and a man who has been farting higher than his own arse ever since he got elected in 2014. Moulton ran a strong campaign. He ousted an endangered incumbent who was all tangled in so much family corruption that a Republican pickup of that seat was a distinct possibility—or, at least, as distinct a possibility as was ever enjoyed by a Massachusetts Republican. Almost immediately, Moulton signed on to the challenge to Pelosi's leadership mustered up by the anti-charismatic Tim Ryan of Ohio. Almost immediately, and most spectacularly, Moulton began spending a lot of time in Iowa. This is a fellow who thinks a great deal of his own inherent political gifts.

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Now, it seems, they've gotten the band back together again. The #FiveWhiteGuys are Moulton, Ryan, Ed Perlmutter of Colorado, Kurt Schrader of Oregon, and Bill Foster of Illinois. The driving forces remain Moulton and Ryan, with the latter the putative leader. After an election in which the Democratic Party continues to elect a demographically and politically diverse collection of new House members, Ryan is still insisting that the party needs to "reach out" to angry white men in places like Ohio when, in fact, if the midterms proved anything, it is that the Democratic Party's future is in places like Arizona and Nevada, and even Georgia and Florida, while, except for Sherrod Brown, god bless him, Ohio is a lost cause. It was an outlier even in its own geographic area. There were Democratic—and progressive—victories in Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Illinois. Ohio and, yes, Iowa, were loss leaders.

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This did not stop Moulton, who declines to challenge Pelosi himself, from spouting off in Roll Call that he and his group have the votes to block Pelosi's elevation to the speakership on the floor of the House—although, as has now become customary, Moulton declines to provide details on exactly how many members of the House have signed on here.

Moulton suggested they already have enough signatures to prevent Pelosi from getting 218 votes but declined to specify exactly how many. “The whole point of the letter is to accelerate this process so that it doesn’t peel out on to the floor,” he said. “She’s the one that’s trying to drive this to a floor vote. We want to make it clear before it comes to that.”

Moulton and Schrader contend the Pelosi opposition is bigger than it appears, based on those who have spoken out publicly. While no one has stepped forward to challenge her, they feel someone will once they show how large that opposition is. “The point is, once it’s clear that Pelosi doesn’t have the votes, there are other people — we have enormous talent in our caucus — there are other people that will step forward,” Moulton said.

Yeah, that'll work.

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I am willing to concede—indeed, I am devoutly hoping—that this talk is all a bluff. The #FiveWhiteGuys seem to think they can scare Pelosi out of running, which is completely foolish. This is because, if it's not a bluff, and Moulton really has these votes, it almost certainly means that he's cut a deal with some Republicans to get them.

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He spends an awful lot of time blowing off steam about bipartisan problem-solving and all those other conjuring words that will magically transport you to cable green rooms, but that also completely ignore the fact that, now that it's in the minority, the Republican House caucus will be even crazier than it was under Paul Ryan. And arguing that the party needs a "new generation of leadership," while playing coy over who that might be, and whom they might owe for their elevation, is a bit of smoky legerdemain that smacks of a three-card monte game.

For those members, old and new, who oppose Pelosi from the left, the #FiveWhiteGuys are offering a sucker's bet. The #FiveWhiteGuys are of the school that believes that the Democratic Party's needs are best served winning back all those disgruntled folks at diners in the Mahoning Valley, a theory fairly well demolished last Tuesday. It is very unlikely that a Green New Deal or Medicare For All is high on their list of priorities. The only argument that the #FiveWhiteGuys have that might resonate with their new progressive colleagues is that Pelosi is old and has been in Congress for a long time. Period. That's not enough to dispense with the party's most effective legislative leader since Lyndon Johnson.

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So what the #FiveWhiteGuys are flirting with is not a brawl within the party, but a three-way brawl in which the progressive side and the #FiveWhiteGuys side both work to bring Pelosi down, which would set the stage for an absolute bloodbath between those two forces for the right to pick her successor. (And, strictly from a provincial standpoint here in the Commonwealth—God save it!—we are preparing to have Richard Neal as chairman of House Ways and Means and James McGovern as chairman of House Rules. If this attempted coup screws that up, Moulton's going to have some serious 'splainin' to do back home.)

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There is no need for any of this. Pelosi stays as speaker. Steny Hoyer goes, replaced by, say, Hakeem Jeffries of New York. Jim Clyburn does what he wants, and the new generation moves into position as deputy whips under him. Then the Democratic Party can get back to the primary business at hand: beating the Republicans sufficiently hard and sufficiently often until the Republican Party regains a semblance of sanity. It's a long, hard job.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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