Nancy Pelosi is politically marinated in the hard left politics of the Bay Area, and has a soft spot in her heart for a Stalinist mentor. Writing in the Weekly Standard, Joshua Muravchik reminds us of the role of the Communist-led International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union (ILWU) in turning the San Francisco Bay Are to the hard left, and of Nancy Pelosi's apparent deep affection and respect for crypto-Communist ILWI leader Harry Bridges.

The Roosevelt and Truman administrations tried to deport Bridges [an immigrant from Australia], on the grounds that he had lied about his Communist affiliation in his immigration papers, but for various procedural reasons the case was dismissed. So loyal was Bridges to Moscow that during the period of the Stalin-Hitler pact, he opposed the (1940) reelection of labor hero FDR, because Roosevelt was aligning the United States with Britain against Germany, and the ILWU printed antiwar pamphlets proclaiming "The Yanks Are NOT Coming." As soon as Hitler's forces invaded the Soviet Union, Bridges did a 180-degree about-face on the war. [....]

The point of rehearsing all of this ancient history is that one of those he influenced and who still goes out of her way to honor that influence is Nancy Pelosi. In 2001, she took to the pages of the Congressional Record to effuse her sentiments on the hundredth anniversary of Harry Bridges's birth, an occasion celebrated only by a gnostic few.

Here is what she said: "Harry Bridges [was] arguably the most significant labor leader of the twentieth century," who was "beloved by the workers of this Nation, and recognized as one of the most important labor leaders in the world." She added: "The International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union [was] the most progressive union of the time." In other words, this Communist-run union was more admirable than all of the anti-Communist unions.