Recently, DC elections pundit Dave Wasserman aimed a harsh barb at DC Democrats: "If more than 50% of your '16 voters lived in just 9 states & 94 of America's 3,141 counties... you're probably not a healthy national party." Fact is, neither party is healthy. I don't care about the other party but is the Democratic Party salvageable? As they have mentioned themselves, the best thing the Democrats have going for them-- not that it's enough-- is Trump. His plummeting job approval numbers are now below 1/3 for the first time. He's not on the ballot in 2018 and the only way voters can express that disapproval will be by replacing Paul Ryan with @IronStache, replacing Darrell Issa with Doug Applegate, replacing Ron Estes with Jim Thompson, replacing Ted Cruz with Beto O'Rourke and dozens more congressional Republicans with progressive Democrats-- from "the red district" in Maine to all 4 red districts in Orange County. (A bonus would be seeing Democrats clean their own house and get repeal and replace their own disasters like Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Dan Lipinski, Joe Crowley, Kyrsten Sinema... even Pelosi, all of whom have spirited primary challengers this cycle.)Recently we did an unscientific poll asking twitter users who they would rather have campaigning for them if they were congressional candidates, top Democrats Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer or Joe Crowley or an iron worker named Randy Bryce who's never been elected to anything outside his union. 88% picked Bryce (and not one person picked Crowley, the likely post-Pelosi/Hoyer Democratic House leader). This is in line with what I'm hearing from actual congressional candidates. Virtually no one wants Pelosi, Hoyer, Crowley, Wasserman Schultz, Tom Perez or Ben Ray Lujan coming to their districts to campaign for them publicly. Instead, everyone wants Bernie, Elizabeth Warren, the Obamas, Ted Lieu, Pramila Jayapal, Ro Khanna, Keith Ellison... and Randy Bryce. That's too painful for DCCC leaders to hear or wrap their heads around, let alone to think about changing the entirely counterproductive, dysfunctional way the DCCC operates.How do people get to be party leaders in Congress? The simple answer is that the members elect them. The more accurate answer is that they purchase the loyalty of their colleagues, usually with vast sums of cash they raise from special interests. "House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has reportedly raised $25.9 million in 2017 through hosting 124 lavish fundraising galas across the country to boost the campaign coffers of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC)," wrote Michael Sainato yesterday. "Herein lies the primary reason she has kept her leadership position despite her unpopularity with voters and even her own colleagues, who have lost faith in her ability to lead. In a recent survey of 20 House Democratic candidates, only one would vocally support Pelosi. This survey comes just weeks after several congressmen spoke out about the need for leadership change. 'President Putin probably has a better approval rating in Georgia than Nancy Pelosi,' said David Kim, a candidate in Georgia’s Seventh Congressional District, in an interview with McClatchyDC."
Since the 2016 election, Pelosi has made several gaffes and contradicted the Democratic Party’s messaging as she fights to preserve the party establishment’s status quo.In December 2016, she reduced calls for reform by saying in an interview, “I don’t think Democrats want a new direction.”During a CNN town hall in February 2017, she condescendingly told a millennial who supported Sen. Bernie Sanders, “We’re capitalists, that’s just the way it is,” in response to a question about why Democrats don’t embrace Sanders’ policies. She went on to explain that Democrats should strive for compassionate capitalism.After Georgia special congressional election candidate Jon Ossoff lost partially due to Republicans aligning him with Pelosi, several Democrats began speaking out about the need for change in party leadership. Pelosi’s abrasiveness toward progressives and Sanders supporters inspired a primary challenger, Stephen Jaffe, to face her in the 2018 Democratic primaries.Recently, Pelosi’s obliviousness to the party’s problems have been even more apparent than usual. She essentially reduced the Democrats’ new platform and Better Deal slogan to a marketing campaign when she said the change is “not a course correction but a presentation correction.”On July 30, she told Fox News that she is “a master legislator.” Her actions and rhetoric demonstrate that she favors maintaining her own political power and that of the Democratic establishment over entertaining the possibility that her poor leadership has been poisoning the party. “We have unity in our own party. You saw it with the fight on the Affordable Care Act in the House and in the Senate,” Pelosi insisted.The only unity Pelosi has been able to achieve is with the party’s donors. In November 2016, she attended a closed door conference with donors to perform an autopsy of the 2016 election. In 2017, she has used her super PAC, the Nancy Pelosi Victory Fund, to raise money for herself and the DCCC. The fund is similar in structure to Hillary Clinton’s controversial Hillary Victory Fund, a joint fundraising committee with the DNC, which Politico reported was used to essentially launder money to the Clinton campaign. So far this year, about $1.2 million has passed through the Nancy Pelosi Victory Fund. Another committee, Nancy Pelosi for Congress, has received over $1.2 million in campaign contributions in 2017. Her leadership PAC, called PAC to the Future, has received over $300,000 so far this year, including $2,500 from Blue Cross/Blue Shield’s super PAC.The Washington Post reported that Pelosi racked up million-dollar fundraising hauls at “a trio of ‘Speaker’s Cabinet’ VIP events this year in San Francisco, New York and Los Angeles.” Some of the top donors listed donations of $16,200 each via employees from the investment bank Moelis & Company, private venture capital firm Ambex Venture Partners, Regis Management Investment Advising Firm, Klein Financial, Francisco Partners Private Equity Firm and DFJ Venture Capital. Max contributors and Nancy Pelosi Victory Fund donors include DNC Treasurer William Derrough, lobbyist Michael Berman, oil tycoon heirs Gordon and Ann Getty, former Bill Clinton adviser Tom Werner, billionaire George Marcus and former White House Press Secretary under Obama and now Amazon Senior VP James Carney.The fact that Nancy Pelosi, one of the top Democratic Party leaders, is courting donors in the same manner that has poisoned the Democratic Party’s reputation confirms that Democrats have learned nothing from their losses. Instead of revamping the party through grassroots organizing and fundraising, Pelosi travels the country with billionaires and corporate executives. Nothing in the Democratic Party will ever change until politicians who prefers donors over voters are removed from leadership roles.
One of New York's sleaziest conservative members of Congress, at least among Democrats, Long Island New Dem Kathleen Rice, recently told the media that House Democrats "need leadership change. It's time for Nancy Pelosi to go, and the entire leadership team." Many right-of-center politicians like Rice have long opposed Pelosi, but now even liberals and progressives are sick of her and just want her to take Hoyer and Crowley and Wasserman Schultz and go away. One member of Congress told me that "The current leadership team is old and in the way... As you said in your blog last week, Nancy's expiration date is long past due. The idea of Hoyer or Crowley as leader really makes me sick though." What a way to wade into the 2018 midterms!
