As we head toward the Midterm Elections, one question is how people feel about Nancy Pelosi, Minority Leader of the House. For instance, Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.) straight-out asked her to resign ahead of the election, according to The Blaze, but the National Review says it’s not because of sexism. Pelosi had been asked that question in an interview with Rolling Stone.
Meanwhile, Republicans are trying to tie Dem candidates to the California pol, according to The Hill.
A Republican super PAC aligned with Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) is out with a new ad in Kansas hitting Democratic House hopeful Sharice Davids as an ally of Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). . .
The ad marks the latest effort by the CLF to tie Democrats across the country to Pelosi, who has long been cast as a sort of bogeyman in Republicans’ campaign narrative.
Fox says many Democrats are jumping on the anti-Pelosi bandwagon.
Democratic congressional candidates are revolting against Nancy Pelosi in even bigger numbers, amid fears that her grip on power could hurt the party’s chances in the midterms and hold back its next generation of leaders.
The list of candidates refusing to support the California Democrat for speaker — or refusing to state their position — has steadily grown, though estimates vary.
In fact, Fox Insider calls Pelosi an “albatross.”
Jason Chaffetz said it’s understandable why some Democrats are distancing themselves from Pelosi, calling her a political liability. . .”Now she is the number one albatross around the Democrats’ necks,” Chaffetz said.
The National Review also says Pelosi is harming Dem chances.
Pelosi is toxic enough that NBC News reported on Friday that she might have trouble winning the necessary 218 votes for speaker even if Democrats become a majority of the House:
At least 42 of the party’s nominees for House seats have declared they will not back Pelosi, and nine incumbent Democratic lawmakers are on the record opposing her, bringing the total to 51. An additional 34 Democratic nominees are neither for nor against Pelosi, who has led her party in the House since 2003.
Even Britain’s The Guardian got into the act.
A strong case can be made that the congressional elections this year are the most important off-year contests since at least 1946 – the year when the Republicans took control of Congress for the first time since the Depression and brought a generation of virulent anti-communists like Joseph McCarthy to power.
For all the glib talk of a “blue wave”, there is a sizable risk that the Democrats could fall a few seats short of the 24 they need to win back the House. Even with, say, a three-seat majority, the Republicans would select all the committee chairmen and thwart any investigation into the misdeeds of the Trump administration.
But not all Democrats are afraid of Pelosi, and some say she’s an asset. The usually very liberal Huffington Post is standing up for the establishment leader.
The bottom line is simple: The fact that Nancy Pelosi is their House leader is a huge net positive for Democratic candidates this fall…
It turns out that the chief role of congressional leaders is not to be the “face” of their respective party. It is to be a strategist, organizer, fundraiser and, above all, unifier of their forces, leading them into battle.
On that front, Pelosi has excelled.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) has now recruited solid candidates to run in 100 of the 101 districts that it targets as in play this year. All but a handful of Republican incumbents ? even in very red districts ? have Democratic challengers. And Democratic fundraising during this electoral cycle is setting all manner of records, with no signs of letting up.
The Daily Caller points out that Pelosi brings in loads of cash.
Democratic House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi raised $91 million for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) through July in an effort to help her party snag the 23 House seats needed to gain control in the upcoming midterm elections.
The first $83 million were amassed by June, according to internal documents obtained by CNN.
She’s also good at “filling the bench” with young leaders.
Real Clear Politics says she’s right to stay in charge.
Pelosi is generally regarded by both supporters and critics as an effective legislator and a steely negotiator, not a source of Beltway dysfunction. . .
Yet she is not an inflexible partisan. When Republican divides made Democratic votes necessary to keep the government open and avert a debt default this year and last, Pelosi delivered them. In her first run as speaker, she engineered the last increase in the federal minimum wage America has had, part of a bipartisan deal that also secured additional funding for the Iraq War. And in 2015, when a handful of right-wing members were making noise about ousting Speaker John Boehner in a House floor vote, Boehner asked Pelosi if she would, if necessary, have her members vote “present” and deny the coup plotters a majority. She agreed.
In fact, Pelosi told Rolling Stone that the reason Republicans want her gone is that she’s so good at what she does. And she notes that while it can’t be their only message, Democrats should run against Trump.
We can’t take credit for taking his [Trump’s] numbers down, but for taking advantage of the opportunity it presented. To keep [his numbers] down we had to make sure people understood what Republicans were trying to do with the Affordable Care Act, what they were doing in terms of inequality and the disparity of income. Anyway, he was at 38 to 40 percent a year before the [2018] election. So, they get the retirements. I think it’s 46 today. And we get the A-Team on the field. We would like to say we recruited [our candidates]. Trump recruited them for us. [Laughs.] We’re in a very good place now.
Maybe the best sign that Pelosi is effective is that she has actually encouraged candidates to run against her, if they need to, according to the Guardian.
The House minority leader said Democrats running in conservative House districts across the country should do what they must to win – including running against her.
“I think if they have to do that to win the election, I’m all for winning,” Pelosi said in an interview with Politico Playbook on Tuesday. “I think many of them are saying we need new leadership. I don’t take offense at that.”
Roll Call says running against Pelosi may not help the GOP, anyway.
Pelosi is the House minority leader at a time when Republicans control the House, Senate and White House. She is a public figure, certainly, but her role is not particularly high profile now, and she has little power on Capitol Hill. Trump, in contrast, dominates the political stage and occupies the most powerful position in the government. Given that, it will be challenging for Republican nominees around the country to make the midterm elections “about” Pelosi.
In fact, Cook Political Report says that Trump has helped Democrats, because of his fights with his own party.
It’s clear that the Twitter tiffs between Trump and congressional Republicans, as well as Steve Bannon’s newly engaged war on Leader Mitch McConnell, has taken its toll on on perceptions of the party leaders.
For example, back in October of 2015, NBC/Wall Street Journal polling showed that Mitch McConnell, was relatively undefined and relatively unpopular, with 33 percent viewing him unfavorably and just seven viewing him favorably for an overall favorable score of -26. By September of this year, his unfavorables had jumped to 41 percent with just 11 percent viewing him favorably for an overall favorable score of -30.
Speaker Ryan went from relatively neutral in October of 2015 (23 favorable/28 unfavorable for a -5 score) to relatively unfavorable this September. Ryan’s unfavorables jumped 12 points to 40 percent while his favorable stayed the same for a score of -16.
Now, McConnell may be the new “Pelosi,” thanks to Trump.
The latest evidence of McConnell’s toxicity among Republican voters came in a West Virginia Senate debate this week. All three Republican candidates were asked to raise their hands if they supported McConnell for majority leader. None did. . .
Don Blankenship, the coal baron who spent a year in prison on charges connected to a mine accident that killed 29 people — and who this week labeled McConnell “Cocaine Mitch” in a shot at McConnell’s father-in-law’s shipping company — ducked behind his podium.
“He interferes with elections all over this country. He’s interfering with this election,” Blankenship said, complaining about groups with ties to McConnell spending against him ahead of Tuesday’s primary.
So. . .who’s worse, Pelosi or McConnell? Maybe that’s the real test this year.
