Politicizing Nancy Pelosi's ice cream is a fridge too far
She's right, although my reaction was echoed by her liberal fellow panelist Joy Behar: "Let's go to Trump Tower," said Behar, "and see what kind of refrigerator he has."
Indeed, in the political Twitter-sphere and punditocracy, as media guru Marshall McLuhan declared way back in the pre-internet era, "Seeing is not believing, believing is seeing." What you don't see in the fireworks over Pelosi's ice cream are the quiet but effective negotiations she was conducting with Trump's Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to achieve something Trump says he loves: a good deal.
After blocking two coronavirus rescue packages pushed by Republicans -- and surviving blasts of criticism -- Democrats won hundreds of billions of dollars in concessions aimed at helping people previously overlooked.
At almost $500 billion, the final measure ended up at almost twice the size and scope of the bill that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, tried to rush to passage without negotiations two weeks earlier.
Democrats won $320 billion in new funds to that depleted small business loan program, which was about $70 billion more than the infusion that McConnell sought. That included $60 billion that Democrats requested for smaller community lenders which have the toughest time acquiring loans from the bigger banks.
Democrats also won $75 billion for hospitals and $25 billion for COVID-19 testing, which may well be the most needed, yet most poorly funded or supplied, aspect of the pandemic fight. Along with funds for testing, the bill mandates the Trump administration to build a strategy to help states step up the deployment of tests throughout the country.
The measure doesn't cover all ills, by any means, but Pelosi and her party won a lot more than ice cream. Political trolling and other election year shenanigans are inevitable in our democracy. But taking our frustrations out on Pelosi's ice cream? That's a fridge too far.
========
(E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@chicagotribune.com.)
(c) 2020 CLARENCE PAGE DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.
