PHILADELPHIA—All weekend here at Netroots Nation, the halls and lobbies were hot with disputations concerning the problems that Speaker Nancy Pelosi had stirred up with some of the more popular young members of her majority in the House of Representatives. This had resulted in some pushback, and some pushback on the pushback, and, on Saturday night, a low-level anxiety attack when Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's chief of staff, Saikat Chakrabarti, committed a graceless drive-by against Congresswoman Sharice Davids, accusing her on the electric Twitter machine of "enabling a racist system."

Almost immediately, the official House Democrats account, run by Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, fired off a tweet slamming Chakrabarti, and using the unfortunate Davids as a cudgel. (For the record, Sharice Davids is a star in the making and has proven to be a true dynamo.) All the resentment of the Speaker's dilatory approach to holding the administration to account, and all the resentment of the Speaker's loyalists against their noisy rookies, both simultaneously came to a boil. People chose up sides. Never Trumpers went into high-sterics. They bellowed their terror that AOC somehow was going to cripple their attempt to fashion a Democratic candidate who was close enough to Mitt Romney to support comfortably.

Speaker Pelosi did battle with her own caucus throughout last week. Win McNamee Getty Images

And, on Sunday morning, Maureen Dowd, whose spiffy Pelosi profile had gotten the ball rolling in the first place, applied her unique gift for half-witted snark and moth-eaten cultural references to the controversy in The New York Times. She also sought the support of the unpleasant Democratic Undead. This was not particularly helpful.

Rahm Emanuel told me Chakrabarti is “a snot-nosed punk” who has no idea about the battle scars Pelosi bears from the liberal fights she has led. “What votes did you get?” Emanuel said, rhetorically challenging A.O.C.’s chief of staff. “You should only be so lucky to learn from somebody like Nancy who has shown incredible courage and who has twice returned the Democratic Party to power. “We fought for years to create the majorities to get a Democratic president elected and re-elected, and they’re going to dither it away. They have not decided what’s more important: Do they want to beat Trump or do they want to clear the moderate and centrists out of the party? You really think weakening the speaker is the right strategy to try to get rid of Donald Trump and everything he stands for?”

Me? If I'm talking about an intramural controversy tinged with a distinct racial subtext, I don't go to a career pit viper whose career in public office ended with his trying to slow-walk the evidence in a particularly egregious episode of police murder. But, anyway, it looked like Dems in Disarray was going to be the trope of the week.

And then, of course, the president*'s account on the electric Twitter machine sprang into action on Sunday morning.

So interesting to see ‘Progressive’ Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world (if they even have a functioning government at all), now loudly and viciously telling the people of the United States, the greatest and most powerful Nation on earth, how our government is to be run. Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came. Then come back and show us how it is done. These places need your help badly, you can’t leave fast enough. I’m sure that Nancy Pelosi would be very happy to quickly work out free travel arrangements!

It seems almost ridiculous to point out that, with the exception of Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, who became a citizen in her teens after her family had fled Somalia, the members of Congress at whom was aimed this banal drunk-in-a-barroom rhetoric all were born in this country. (Rep. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts was born in Cincinnati, for god's sake. Far as I know, you don't need a passport to go see the Bengals play.)

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) and Rep. Deb Haaland (D-NM) take part in a panel discussion at Netroots Nation this weekend. NurPhoto Getty Images

Almost immediately, the story changed from "Dems In Disarray to "Yeah, the President* Is Still a Big Old Racist So Whatcha Gonna Do About It?" Among Republicans, of course, the answer was nothing. Except for Justin Amash—who called the presidential* tweets "racist and disgusting"—no Republican member of Congress had the sand to condemn the president*'s naked bigotry, but many of them did demonstrate their skills at licking both boots and spittle. Susan Collins had nothing to say, although I'm sure she was deeply concerned. Ben Sasse also went into seclusion, possibly considering how much better a human being the president* would be had he grown up milking chickens on the lone prairie. Joni Ernst tweeted out some nifty footwear. Jesus, these people are pathetic.



As for Pelosi, who has to be wondering at this point how much her ostracizing the targets of the president*'s tweets emboldened him, not that this guy needs very much emboldening to let his inner Verwoerd loose, she managed a couple of tweets in defense of her embattled colleagues, but they didn't mention them by name and they were sort of a muted support for "diversity." What needs to happen on Monday is to have Pelosi and these four women standing together conspicuously on the Capitol steps.



Trump’s rancid tweets reset the stage. MANDEL NGAN Getty Images

In a remarkable bit of serendipity, three of the four women appeared on the same Netroots panel on Saturday, just as the Pelosi-AOC storm was breaking. (Only AOC was missing.) Omar won my heart almost immediately by referring to the "trail of blood" left behind the inexcusable Elliott Abrams during the latter's time in public service. Rep. Rashida Tialib repeated her call to impeach the motherfcker, which had garnered her a lot of attention on election night. And Pressley did not arrive to play at all, and she gave the assembled the quote that they would take away from the panel, and the assembled media the quote that would make their day.

"If you’re not prepared to come to that table and represent that voice, don’t come, because we don’t need any more brown faces that don’t want to be a brown voice...We don’t need black faces that don’t want to be a black voice. We don’t need Muslims that don’t want to be a Muslim voice. We don’t need queers that don’t want to be a queer voice. If you’re worried about being marginalized and stereotyped, please don’t even show up because we need you to represent that voice."

That sent folks to the fainting couches again for the balance of Saturday afternoon, the way they'd been fleeing to them ever since the dustup between Pelosi and "The Squad" had begun a week earlier. But everyone woke up on Sunday morning to discover that the president* had made whatever bad blood existed between them look like lemonade. The poison, as it ever has, is pooling elsewhere.

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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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