What it is really like to work on a campaign: the Republicans want to run against Nancy Pelosi

It really happens when you door knock: people repeat back to you what the ads on TV are saying about the candidates. This goes for both sides -- and here in Nevada, a perennial swing state deluged in political advertising, many voters tell me they just don't pay attention to any of the ads. But nonetheless, the ad themes permeate the air.

One of the strangest themes to this Californian is that Republicans keep accusing our Democratic US Senate candidate Jacky Rosen of being a stooge for Democratic House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. Pelosi has been my Congressperson what seems nearly forever -- since 1987. For her San Francisco constituents, she seems a moderate, but she has led the Democratic caucus since 2007, serving as Speaker of the House from 2007 through the 2010 elections. She evidently really does lead. Democrats are a notoriously contentious bunch, but unlike say the Republican leader Speaker Paul Ryan, Pelosi somehow manages to get her Democrats on the same page, voting the same way when it matters, such as to defend health care access.

And so, professional Republican politicians hate her effectiveness and seek to make her a national hate object. This takes a lot of ad dollars, since most voters barely know who their own Congressperson is, much less who some woman from California is. Hillary is gone from the national scene; they aim to make Nancy Pelosi another powerful woman to hate.

A few months ago, Paul Waldman wrote an insightful column about the odd Republican fixation on Pelosi.

The Republican attack on Pelosi is about conservative identity politics, full stop. It’s partly the same kind of ugly misogyny that has driven conservatives for years, and that comes out whenever the prospect of a woman wielding genuine power rears its head. Women who display ambition are judged harshly, particularly by conservatives; it’s no accident that Bernie Sanders, whose policy ideas are much more opposed to conservatism than Pelosi’s, inspires nothing like the venomous loathing on the right that Pelosi and Hillary Clinton do.

And it’s partly the us-versus-them conflict that has animated every Republican campaign for a half century. Democrats, they tell voters, aren’t like us. They don’t share our values; they’re elitist and alien and threatening. Those ideas can be expressed through issues, but what they’re about is cultural affinity: The Republican candidate is one of us, and the Democratic candidate is one of them.

... Republicans will continue to attack Pelosi from now until November, because they have few better ideas for how to convince voters to send them back to Congress. In some places it might work to get their base to the polls; more often, in all likelihood, it won’t. But either way, we shouldn’t buy for a second that the reason they do it is because they’re trying to say something about policy.

Some Democrats, including some younger Congress members, think it is time for Pelosi to give up the leadership. I get it. Democrats need to make room for a new generation of leaders. If we all do our work and turn out to vote this fall, that will be underway.

But Republicans aren't talking about that. The ads I hear repeated on the doors are the usual lies and woman-hatred, not a principled critique. I guess a political party that can't find a more principled leader than Donalc Trump hasn't got any principles except greed and individual ambition.