Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?
After a serious challenge to her leadership from Rep. [score]Tim Ryan[/score], Rep. [score]Nancy Pelosi[/score] is still the House Minority Leader for the Democrats.
Pelosi got 134 votes to Ryan’s 63 — winning 68 percent of the votes after declaring before the election that she had the support of two-thirds of the caucus. The victory sends a message that while there’s a growing appetite for major changes in the party’s leadership structure and messaging tactics, it’s not strong enough to loosen Pelosi’s grip on a liberal-heavy group that’s rarely challenged her authority.
Ryan and his supporters had argued that the Democrats’ grim performance in this year’s elections — the latest in a string of cycles planting Republicans firmly in the majority — was a clear signal that Pelosi’s leadership strategy has failed to attract the broad coalition of voters required to return the Speaker’s gavel to the Democrats’ hands.
The critics pointed, in particular, to the party’s alienation of the middle-class Rust Belt workers, who flocked to Trump and secured victories for a long list of vulnerable Republicans down the ballot. Ryan, who represents an Ohio manufacturing district that’s struggled to keep pace with globalization and rebound from the Great Recession, said he was the right fit to make inroads with those voters.
With a Republican-led White House, Senate, House, and a clear national majority of GOP governors, you’d think the Democratic Party would recognize its elitist and progressive leadership is failing.
Apparently, they still have not learned their lesson (not that I am complaining!).
