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Nancy Pelosi is using gender to win over progressives in her fight to become House speaker

House minority leader Nancy Pelosi.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi says she is confident that she's the best choice to be the next speaker of the House — and that a movement against her within her own party is motivated by sexism.

Pelosi has long said that she remained in Democratic leadership after Hillary Clinton's 2016 loss because without her men would have dominated the highest levels of American politics.

Pelosi and her allies have characterized the intra-party opposition to her speakership as a conservative, male-dominated movement out of touch with the bulk of the Democratic party. They've used the hashtag #FiveWhiteGuys — the same label Pelosi gave to a bipartisan immigration working group earlier this year — to refer to Reps. Seth Moulton and Tim Ryan, both centrist Democrats, who have led the movement against her.

Moulton has made clear that he's not running for speaker, but has only floated one possible alternative so far: Ohio Rep. Marcia Fudge, a

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Fudge, Moulton, and Ryan have also held that the next speaker should be a woman.

"There's plenty of really competent females that we can replace her with," Ryan told reporters last week, referring to Pelosi's replacement.

Fudge was one of three women in a group of 17 incumbent and incoming House members who signed a letter last week promising not to vote for Pelosi on the House floor. As of Friday, at least 20 lawmakers have said they would oppose Pelosi, including a total of six women.

New York Rep. Kathleen Rice, who's also advocating for a "new generation" of Democratic leaders, told reporters in recent days that female members "

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With no viable alternative for speaker on the left, progressive groups have begun to fall in line behind Pelosi — and they're also using gender as a defense of her and an attack on her opponents.

"Anyone who thinks that Pelosi should be replaced by a moderate white guy is fundamentally misreading the moment," Joe Dinkin, spokesman for the Working Families Party, told INSIDER. "Women voters, and especially women of color, powered the progressive wave, and we need more women in leadership roles — not less."

Late last week, Indivisible — the progressive advocacy group behind many insurgent Democratic candidates this year — called Pelosi "a strong and progressive leader" and argued the party shouldn't let a small group of white, moderate men sabotage her."

Incoming progressive members of the House — many of whom sharply criticized Pelosi on the campaign trail and ran against the Democratic establishment — have also moved away from outright opposition to Pelosi.

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On her first day of congressional orientation in Washington, New York Congresswoman-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Democratic Socialist, joined hundreds of young protesters outside Pelosi's office to push for a "

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