Each day brings us new evidence that Mike Johnson no longer has any control over his caucus. Some of that is due to his wafer-thin majority, but Pelosi always managed to keep the herd moving in the right direction, even when she had a tiny margin of error. Why the difference?
Apart from Pelosi’s superior political skills, the difference is in the mindset of the two political parties. The GOP is united only in its dislike of the left, and its members have been taught that the path to wealth and power involves getting lots of attention on the internet and Fox News. The Democrats, on the other hand, agree broadly on their vision of the just society–the battle over Medicare for All, for example, is about feasibility, not desirability–and they are more interested in results than attention, an attitude that works better in the majority than in opposition.