Are the sharks circling House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) again? No, she’s fine. She’ll win the election. She’ll remain the Democratic leader in the House, but that doesn’t mean party members trying to flip seats to reclaim the House, they start to see it as a problemMcClatchy’s Alex Roarty noted that those involved in redistricting efforts next year are not very eager to support the California Democrat, adding that fresh blood is needed in leadership:
In a survey of 20 Democratic House candidates, only one — a former Senate staffer from Orange County, Calif. — expressed support for the congresswoman to remain as leader of the House Democratic Caucus. Of the remaining 18, 18 declined to say whether Pelosi should keep her job, while one, a political newcomer from a culturally conservative Ohio district, said he would vote for someone other than Pelosi.
Their refusal is an extraordinary event for the already embattled minority leader, even as other congressional leaders, such as Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, are similarly unpopular in polls. But more significant are the implications the candidates’ refusal has for next year’s midterm elections.
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“President Putin probably has better support in Georgia than Nancy Pelosi,” said David Kim, a candidate from Georgia’s 7th congressional district.
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We need a change in leadership,” New York Democratic congresswoman Kathleen Rice, who has criticized Pelosi in the past, told CNN. “It’s time for Nancy Pelosi to go, and the entire leadership team to go.”
Ossoff’s defeat, and Pelosi’s role in it, weighs heavily on Democrats — to the point that her role as a motivator for candidates across the country is no longer enough to motivate potential lawmakers to talk about supporting the House leader.
A spokesman for Chrissy Houlahan, running in Pennsylvania’s 6th District, said she “needs to get elected first and is focused on her race.” Andrea Ramsey, running in Kansas’ 3rd Congressional District, said “Kansas voters don’t care about hypothetical D.C. domestic politics.”
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Only one Democratic candidate contacted said he would support Pelosi — Kia Hamadanchy, running in California’s 45th congressional district.
Most of the Democrats Roarty contacted are running in districts that voted for Clinton but split in the congressional race. These are the districts where Democrats believe they have a chance of winning back the lower house, although there are a dozen districts where the opposite is true, with voters who voted for Trump in droves but backed a Democrat for representative. Still, the fact that only a Democrat The entry into a competitive race that is open to Pelosi, a California native, highlights the problem the party is grappling with: breaking away from its salty, coastal ties. The abortion drama, for one, is driving this debate. Hard-core liberals don’t want the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee to support pro-life Democrats, while others know it’s a way to prevent the party from being one that can only win in states that touch the ocean. The Democrats’ path to a majority runs through red-leaning districts. Given the results of the 6th congressional race in Georgia, in which Democrat Jon Ossoff failed to beat Republican Karen Handel, the left was doused with chilly water. The district was Republican, but not pro-Trump. It was a perfect proxy. Democratic turnout was the highest in a decade, and they still couldn’t win. “New York Times” Nate Cohn added that the Georgia result suggests a scenario in which the 2018 electorate is a near mirror image of the 2016 electorate, which was good for Republicans. Still, the anti-Pelosi tirade is nothing fresh. Ossoff, being associated with her, seemed to be a motivator for GOP voters in GA-06. As did Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, who don’t seem to want to abandon the game anytime soon. All three will energize Republican voters, although Democrats can’t energize their base without them.
But given House Democrats’ inability to retake the House in 2012, 2014, and 2016, you’d think fresh blood was needed. After Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton for president, it seemed clear that fresh blood and a fresh agenda were needed. Instead, they got the same ancient crew, who continue to push the Democratic Party machine down, and recycle Clinton’s 2016 platform and try to transform it into something fresh. That’s exactly the lethargy Matt Bai wrote in JuneThis is why Pelosi and everyone in her generation should go unless you want to give Trump a second term:
Pelosi should leave the stage not because she is controversial, but because Democrats desperately need, more than any fresh brand strategy or slogan, a turnover of talent. Which is why the rest of the party’s ancient luminaries should follow her out the door.
Here’s a question for all you trivia fans to ponder: Who do you think was the last non-incumbent Democrat over the age of 55 to win the White House? I’m not talking about Harry Truman or Lyndon Johnson, who both inherited the job, but someone running against an incumbent president or at the end of an eight-year term.
Hint: You were already dead by then, and neither were your parents.
white supremacist and don’t let everyone think it’s completely weird.” data-reactid=”48″ type=”text”>The answer is Woodrow Wilson, who ran for president so long ago that you can still be both progressive and white supremacist and not have everyone think it’s completely weird.
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…Democrats win when they embody modernization. Liberalism triumphs only when it represents the reform of government, not just its preservation. Franklin Roosevelt, John Kennedy, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama —all of them, in one way or another, deviated significantly from the orthodoxy of the past.
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… [C]Certainly, some of the blame for the current stagnation can be placed on younger Democrats, some of whom are good enough speakers to galvanize the party base but who have so far spectacularly failed to offer any reformist agenda that fits the moment. Unless you have a competing vision of governance, you have little to complain about.
But the bottom line is that Democrats are squandering their historic advantage by rallying around elders who would build a better time machine than their Republican rivals. Liberalism doesn’t need its own version of “Make America Great Again”; it needs a vision to make America fresh.
The party with Pelosi, Sanders and Warren at its core — not to mention the Clintons and their entire campaign apparatus remaining in the country — is a party that could indeed drive America, for a second time, into the clutches of Trumpism.
Trust me: no one is worth that kind of trouble.
Democrats aren’t deviating from that path for now, but it’s clear that most candidates running in districts this year see her as a toxic asset.
