A House Democrat lamented Thursday that his party has no plan and no strategy for rebuilding a Democratic majority in the House over the next few years.
Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, D-Mo., told MSNBC Thursday that he voted to keep Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi in her leadership role in the House, but admitted that she and other Democratic leaders don’t have a plan in place.
“If we had elected new leaders to come in … they would have been elected yesterday, and they would have had hardly any time to do anything except move into a new office,” Cleaver said. “At the present time, I’ve got to say, we have no strategy and we have no plan, but at least we have some proven leadership that can … take us into what’s going to be a new era.”
“We cannot have as our plan to go to the floor for the next two years only to hit the ceiling. That’s not a plan, that’s not a strategy, and that would have pretty much been all we had changed leaders abruptly,” Cleaver said.
“I do think it is time for us to bring in younger people in leadership,” he added. “In fact, if we don’t, I think it will spell the demise of the Democratic Caucus if we’re not already permanently in a state of smallness. I do think we’ll come out.”
After Wednesday’s leadership vote, Cleaver remarked that Rep. Tim Ryan, D-Ohio, who challenged Pelosi for the top Democratic job in the House, has a future in the caucus despite the vote not to change leaders. He told the Kansas City Star that Ryan’s loss wasn’t a rejection, but rather a “message.”
“I told him later it was almost like he’d been to seminary, the way his voice rose and fell. He also hit on all the things members of the caucus were feeling and expressing,” Cleaver said. “This wasn’t a rejection of Tim Ryan. It was a message: Hold on, change is coming.”
