Update: Nancy Pelosi does have one supporter who believes she should stay...
I certainly hope the Democrats do not force Nancy P out. That would be very bad for the Republican Party - and please let Cryin' Chuck stay!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 22, 2017
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Democrats' embarrassing special-election loss in Georgia, after the liberal media built up unrealistic expectations, has provoked a wave of bitter blowback that targets House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi.
As Axios notes, it's part of a generational argument that's also driving the party's 2020 conversation.
“It was a very rough night for Nancy Pelosi,” said Sean Clegg, a Democratic strategist in San Francisco, adding that he was personally a big fan of hers.
“Republican messaging attacking Pelosi appeared to be more effective than Democratic messaging against Trump. That’s a problem going forward, and it’s going to be a challenge in House races particularly.”
"I think the problem is we have not come up with an agenda and then we need a strategy to communicate it," Rep. Bill Pascrell, D-N.J., said.
"We can't just be against something."
On Wednesday, some Democratic members of Congress publicly voiced concerns about Pelosi, raising the specter of a leadership challenge.
“I think you’d have to be an idiot to think we could win the House with Pelosi at the top,” Rep. Filemon Vela, a Texas Democrat, told Politico.
“Nancy Pelosi is not the only reason that Ossoff lost, but she certainly is one of the reasons.”
Representative Ben Ray Luján of New Mexico, the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, reportedly met Wednesday morning with a group of lawmakers who have been conferring about economic messaging, according to several people present who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Mr. Luján told the group that his committee would examine the Georgia results for lessons, but he urged the lawmakers to portray the race in positive terms in their public comments, stressing that Democrats have consistently exceeded their historical performance in a series of special elections fought in solidly Republican territory.
It was in the meeting with Mr. Luján that Mr. Cárdenas, a member of the Democratic leadership, brought up Ms. Pelosi’s role in the Georgia race, calling it “the elephant in the room.”
Ms. Pelosi was not present.
On the front page of liberal heartland Silicon Valley's paper, The Mercury News of San Jose...
"Some of the toughest ads against the 30-year-old [Georgia Dem candidate Jon] Ossoff were those tying him to Pelosi, whose approval ratings are underwater outside California."
Furthermore, as NYTimes reports, in a possible omen, the first Democratic candidate to announce his campaign after the Georgia defeat immediately vowed not to support Ms. Pelosi for leader.
Joe Cunningham, a South Carolina lawyer challenging Representative Mark Sanford, said Democrats needed “new leadership now.”
Even Democrats who are not openly antagonistic toward Ms. Pelosi acknowledged that a decade of Republican attacks had taken a toll: “It’s pretty difficult to undo the demonization of anyone,” said Representative Bill Pascrell Jr. of New Jersey.
So with all that said, we are left with one question, as The Economic Collapse blog's Michael Snyder asks, are the 'toxic' Democrats destine to become a permanent minority party?
It has become exceedingly clear that the Democratic Party is in deep trouble. Close to 55 million dollars was spent on the race in Georgia’s sixth congressional district, and that shattered all kinds of records. Democrat Jon Ossoff was able to raise and spend six times as much money as Karen Handel and yet he still lost. This was supposed to be the race that would show the American people that the Democrats could take back control of Congress in 2018, and so for the Democrats this was a bitter failure. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee actually injected almost 5 million dollars into the race themselves, and Planned Parenthood threw in another $700,000. But after all of the time, effort and energy that was expended, Handel still won fairly comfortably.
The Democrats are trying to spin this result as some sort of “moral victory”, but as Dan Balz of the Washington Post has pointed out, there are “no moral victories in politics”…
There are no moral victories in politics. Republicans won on Tuesday in the most important special election this year. Democrats lost, as they have done in the other special elections in GOP-held seats this year.
For the national Democratic Party, the debate continues about developing a message that goes beyond attacking Trump, or assuming dissatisfaction with the president will be enough.
It has been a very long time since there has been so much national attention on a single House race. A number of high profile Hollywood celebrities became personally involved in Ossoff’s campaign, and they were absolutely devastated when he lost…
Celebrities who donated time and money to Ossoff’s campaign, including actresses Alyssa Milano and Rosie O’Donnell, used their social media accounts to react to the Democrat’s loss shortly after the election results were confirmed late Tuesday night.
Milano, who personally drove voters to the polls in April’s preliminary election and was actively campaigning for the Democrat for most of Election Day, tweeted simply: “Grouphug” and “Get in.”
Meanwhile, electronic music producer Moby and vocal Trump critic O’Donnell appeared to be frustrated by the results, with Moby questioning how Democratic “still can’t win” even with “buffoon” Donald Trump in the White House. O’Donnell tweeted: “DONALD TRUMP IS THE DARKNESS ITSELF.”
Where does the Democratic Party go from here?
Their anti-Trump message is not working, and their usual divide and conquer tactics are not working either.
At this point either the Democratic Party is going to have to reinvent itself, or they could be facing a long, painful string of election defeats for the foreseeable future. To say that things have not been going well for the Democrats lately would be a major understatement. I really like what Rush Limbaugh had to say about this on his radio show…
“You have no idea the degree to which the media and the Democratic Party are destroyed today. I’m talking about how they feel … which is complete and utter defeat, frustration and devastation,” he said on Wednesday, hours after Republican Karen Handel was a multiple percentage point winner over defeated Democrat Jon Ossoff.
“The dirty little secret is the media and the Democratic Party is turning off average Americans. They are not persuading, they are not convincing people Trump is a reprobate,” he continued. “They do not know how to beat Donald Trump. There are depressed and despondent.”
It doesn’t take a genius to figure out why Jon Ossoff lost.
All of the anger and violence that we have seen lately has greatly tainted the Democratic Party.
The Democrats have become the party of Kathy Griffin.
The Democrats have become the party of Antifa and mock Trump assassinations.
And the Democrats have become the party of James Hodgkinson.
U.S. Representative Tim Ryan was right on the ball when he admitted that his party’s brand has now become “toxic” in much of the nation…
Representative Tim Ryan of Ohio, who tried to unseat Ms. Pelosi as House minority leader late last fall, said she remained a political millstone for Democrats. But Mr. Ryan said the Democratic brand had also become “toxic” in much of the country because voters saw Democrats as “not being able to connect with the issues they care about.”
“Our brand is worse than Trump,” he said.
As I have discussed repeatedly, the left doesn’t have any positive vision for the future to offer the American people. They cannot win in the marketplace of ideas, and so they use anger, frustration, intimidation and violence as weapons. For quite a while the Democrats successfully used “the blame game” and divide and conquer tactics to win elections, but now the American people are seeing through the charade.
The more angry and violent the left becomes, the more the American people are going to turn against them. The following comes from Daniel Greenfield…
But Trump Derangement Syndrome is a symptom of a problem with the left that existed before he was born. The left is an angry movement. It is animated by an outraged self-righteousness whose moral superiority doubles as dehumanization. And its machinery of culture glamorizes its anger. The media dresses up the seething rage so that the left never has to look at its inner Hodgkinson in the mirror.
The left is as angry as ever. Campus riots and assassinations of Republican politicians are nothing new. What is changing is that its opponents are beginning to match its anger. The left still clings to the same anger it had when it was a theoretical movement with plans, but little impact on the country. The outrage at the left is no longer ideological. There are millions of people whose health care was destroyed by ObamaCare, whose First Amendment rights were taken away, whose land was seized, whose children were turned against them and whose livelihoods were destroyed.
Of course it is quite true that the Republican Party needs to be cleaned up as well. Many establishment Republicans use labels such as “conservative” and “Pro-Life” to win elections, but then they end up government like Democrats. And so many members of Congress in both parties spend far more time and energy raising money for their next elections than they do serving the American people.
There is a reason why Congress only has a 17.6 percent approval rating at the moment. Both major parties should take that as a sign that they need to clean up their acts, because the American people are sick and tired of the status quo.
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Of course the denial runs deep in The Democratic Party as a morning-after memo from the head of the House Democrats' campaign arm, DCCC Chair Ben Ray Luján of New Mexico, tries to buck up the troops by declaring: "THE HOUSE IS IN PLAY," partly because of "the nationwide collapse of support for President Trump."
And Pelosi herself made the following incredible statements this morning...
- *PELOSI SAYS PROUD OF GA. CONGRESSIONAL RACE SHOWING
- *PELOSI SAYS PROUD OF UNITY AMONG DEMOCRATS, AND HER LEADERSHIP
- *PELOSI SAYS MANY DISTRICTS ARE NOW OPPORTUNITIES FOR DEMOCRATS
- *PELOSI SAYS DEMOCRATS UNITED ON ISSUES
It appears all that Democrats are united on is that Pelosi should go.