House Democratic leadership

Robert Michel (R-IL) was in Congress for 38 years, starting when I was a pre-teen. And he was After serving as Minority Whip for half a dozen years, he became Minority Leader in 1981 and was finally ousted in 1995, completely changing the fortunes of the utterly pathetic House Republicans.

No more of this choreographed failureAfter a decade of abject failure-- in strategy, tactics, messaging and, of course, results-- House Democrats will no longer allow Pelosi to select her pets to chair the DCCC but will elect the chair of their campaign arm, just the way the Republicans do.

Pelosi's first DCCC chairman was Rahm Emanuel, certainly not someone with any seniority, just someone viewed as a tough guy. Ram's guiding philosophy-- that the House Democrats needed fewer progressives interested in policy and more Republican-lite corporate types happy to sit back and leave policy to the leadership-- appeared successful and it is the guiding philosophy to this day. But it was a huge long-term loser.

Congress already has one foolish Ryan too many in leadershipUntil this past Wednesday, the only House Democrats who have publicly gotten behind Tim Ryan's challenge to Pelosi's leadership were a gaggle of reactionaries from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party: Blue Dog co-chairs Kurt Schrader (OR) and Jim Cooper (TN) and rot gut Wall Street-owned New Dems

In 2008, after Obama won his first term, fully 59% of self-identified Republicans wanted their party’s congressional leaders to work with new president to get things done.

Given: Nancy Pelosi needs to be replaced as House Democratic Leader. In any Parliamentary democracy she would have been replaced within days of the 2010 electoral catastrophe she oversaw. The premise for keeping her-- especially inside her own circle of supporters-- has always been that Hoyer, a creature of K Street, is far worse. And he is. Pelosi will be 77 in March. Three months later Hoyer will turn 78.

It may be endlessly entertaining-- and even instructive-- to read about the discord in the Trump transition team, and Maddow certainly seems to have made it her beat, but the GOP knife fights, certainly part of Trump's managerial style, shouldn't take us away from the realistic goal we have to concentrate on: winning, winning, winning in 2018-- House seats and state legislative seats.

Monday, Susan Page, sitting in for Diane Rehm on her radio show, interviewed several people about what the next steps are for the defeated Democratic Party.

What we usually refer to as the New Dems, the New Democrat Coalition, is, even more than the Blue Dogs, the Republican Wing of the Democratic Party. They're getting ready to elect their next leader and the mailer below is from a slick 3-pager sent to newly-elected New Dems members from Jared Polis-- except he accidentally sent it to a Berniecrat who immediately forwarded it to me, along with Jared's message.

Pick yer poisonLast night we talked about how Republicans are already looking at ways to reconstitute their party after Trump is crushed in November. That, however, is certainly easier said than done.