In one speech, Donald Trump called House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi the GOP’s “secret weapon” for winning votes, implying that the more moronic statements that Pelosi makes the more likely people are to vote Republican in the 2018 midterms and beyond. Now, however, it isn’t just Trump and the GOP who are calling Pelosi’s leadership into question- several prominent members of the Democratic Party are now attempting to distance themselves from Pelosi as well.
Conor Lamb- a Democrat who recently won a special election victory in Pennsylvania- came out strong and early against Nancy Pelosi, saying that he would not support nominating her as Speaker of the House if Democrats are able to take back the House in 2018. After running on this message and winning a district that Trump carried in 2016 by 20 percentage points, other Democrats have taken notice of Lamb’s opposition to Pelosi and the victory that it helped him secure.
The assumption has long been that if Democrats take back the House in 2018 that Pelosi would be appointed Speaker. This seems to be Pelosi’s assumption as well, as just hours after Lamb won in Pennsylvania she delivered a speech explaining why she chose not to retire in 2016 and how she plans to keep up the fight through the Trump era. If Democrats do indeed take back the House, though, they might have other plans in mind.
Journalist and political commentator Mike Allen said, “Top Democrats tell me that if they take back the House in November, a restoration of Speaker Nancy Pelosi is no longer guaranteed. In fact, some well-wired House Democrats predict she will be forced aside after the election and replaced by a younger, less divisive Dem.”
The Democrats’ desire to distance themselves from Pelosi has less to do with actual disapproval of her leadership and more to do with giving the GOP less ammunition to work with heading into the midterms. It’s no secret that going after Pelosi and her out-of-touch remarks is a big part of the GOP’s strategy for winning votes in 2018. By distancing themselves from Pelosi, Democrats hope that their association with the controversial representative will have less negative impact on their numbers in the midterms.
Mike Allen did go on to note that while Democrats could choose to distance themselves from Pelosi leading up to the election, they may go ahead and vote for her after the election is over if they are able to take back the House. Allen said, “Dems point out the members and candidates can distance themselves from their leader for political reasons, but then ultimately vote for her.”
However, there’s a lot of risk in this strategy, as one ally of Pelosi pointed out, saying, “[I]f Dems win the majority by, say, a 10-vote majority, and 15 newly elected Dems have committed not to vote for her [like Conor Lamb in Pennsylvania] for leader of the party, … she could lose the floor vote for Speaker. That would give the House to the head of the Republicans.”
This, of course, is a disaster scenario for Democrats, meaning that if they did choose to go ahead and support Pelosi after winning the House they would need to make sure that every Democrat was on board. However, newly elected Democrats who have already vowed to oppose Pelosi such as Conor Lamb will be unlikely to want to walk back that commitment within their first few days in power. This leaves Dems with the option of either distancing themselves from Pelosi – and meaning it – or supporting her right from the start and letting the cards fall where they may. In other words, Democrats are between a rock and a hard place when it comes to whether or not they should support their longtime leader.
If Democrats do choose to stand by Pelosi heading into the midterms, they’ll be giving the GOP plenty of ammunition to target the party at-large. Pelosi has had no shortage of head-scratching remarks in recent months, causing even the most ardent of her supporters to call her leadership into question. These remarks include calling the thousands of dollars that middle-class families will save due to tax reform “crumbs” and saying that our illegal immigration problem could be fixed by mowing the grass on the border, among numerous others.
So far, it seems as if the Democratic Party has taken note of these remarks. Former representative Brad Ashford, a Nebraska Democrat who is trying to reclaim his seat in 2018 said, “I was just in D.C. and that’s the advice that everybody gives: don’t say you’re for Pelosi.”
The biggest problem for Pelosi isn’t just the fact that centrist candidates are opposing her: the new wave of far left, progressive Democrats cut from the cloth of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are expressing hesitancy about supporting Pelosi as well, saying that she embodies the Washington establishment that they vow to bring down. When asked whether she would support Pelosi for Speaker of the House, progressive Democrat Marie Newman, who is running in Illinois, said, “I would have to see who’s running.”
None of this bodes well for Ms. Pelosi and her desire to serve once more as Speaker of the House. Even if Democrats do take back the House – which is still very much in question at this point – it seems likely that Pelosi would not have enough support to weather the incoming barrage of attack ads the GOP will run and still come out strong enough to win a House floor vote. In other words, one way or another, 2018 could be the end of the line for Nancy Pelosi’s political career.
