Democrats who voted to re-elect House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday say she shouldn’t be held responsible for the party’s election losses and is still an effective and energetic leader.
Two-thirds of the Democratic Caucus voted to re-elect Pelosi, rejecting challenger Tim Ryan, of Ohio, who called for a leadership shake-up after the party’s election losses.
“The losses we suffered in November, we really can’t blame her,” Rep. Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., said after Pelosi was re-elected. “It was the loss of support at the top of the ticket and it trickled all the way down.”
Pelosi emerged from the leadership election promising to “remove all doubt” that Democrats represent working families.
Ryan, 43, a Rust Belt representative, had argued President-elect Trump’s victory — particularly in Wisconsin, Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania — showed working-class voters felt ignored by the Democratic Party’s agenda.
Before lawmakers cast their secret ballots, however, Pelosi suggested she can help Democrats win back the majority by attacking the incoming Trump administration, those in the room reported.
The strategy worked in 2006, she reminded Democrats. That year, the they won back the majority from Republicans in part by relentlessly criticizing President George W. Bush and tying him to the House GOP.
Pelosi later told reporters House Democrats would “differentiate us and the administration that will come to Washington in January and to take that message clearly to the public.”
But House Democrats are unlikely to settle for the old tactics in their quest to regain the majority. A full third of the caucus voted for Ryan, the biggest bloc of Pelosi opposition since she was first elected leader in 2002.
Even those who voted for Pelosi said the party needs a new strategy that can draw in voters from the interior states. Ryan, in his bid to oust Pelosi, accused the party of representing “coastal” voters and ignoring everyone else.
Democrats, as they look inward after the election debacle, have acknowledged they ignored Rust Belt states like Wisconsin, which they assumed would vote for Hillary Clinton but instead went for Trump.
House Democrats need to flip at least 24 seats to regain the majority.
“We need to make sure we go to those places,” Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., said of the Rust Belt region. “And twice that. Across the country.”
Swalwell, who was elected to a lower leadership post, said the two-thirds vote for Pelosi shows the caucus has “an overwhelming trust in her,” but at the same time, he added, “folks want to see new energy behind her.”
Democrats Wednesday essentially re-elected their entire leadership team, which has been in place for the better part of a decade and is mostly a group in their 70s, with the exception of Rep. Joe Crowley, of New York. Crowley, 54, was elevated from caucus vice chair to caucus chair.
Engel said that while he supports the leadership team, the party message has strayed from one that can appeal to the working class. The election, he said, “gave us a kick in the rear that perhaps we needed.”
Democrats must begin appealing to the kind of voters who were attracted to Trump’s economic message, he added.
“We’ve got to talk to everybody, and that includes white males who work hard and don’t have a college degree but get up every morning and provide for their families,” Engel said.
