After the rise and electoral triumph of Donald Trump, Democrats could be expected to be searching their souls, re-examining their approach to policy and voters, and maybe even looking for new faces and fresh leadership.
Yet the Democrats could not even bring themselves to replace Nancy Pelosi as their leader in the U.S. House. She was re-elected last week-134 to 63.
Pelosi, 76, has led her party in the House since 2003, including four years as speaker. She was challenged for the leadership position by Rep. Tim Ryan of nearby Youngstown, Ohio. The 43-year-old congressman, just re-elected to his seventh term, said it was time for change in the Democratic Party, an assertion it is almost impossible to refute.
Ryan also said that the Democrats losing the presidential election to Trump was a clear signal that his party no longer hears its base of working men and women. They are the very people who helped the president-elect win the so-called Rust Belt or Brexit states. Ryan asserted that his party has become a party of the East and West Coasts.
But Ryan did not even get close to toppling Pelosi, which makes one wonder what it would take for Democrats to trade in their reliable old war horses for fresh blood and ideas.
The Democrats, under Pelosi, lost the House in 2010, 2012, 2014 and 2016. In 2010 they lost 63 seats. They went from holding 257 seats in 2008 to 194 in this election. This was the year the Dems were supposed to retake the House. They picked up six seats.
How many times do House Democrats have to lose before they figure out that Pelosi is not the winning ticket? She comes from a House district in San Francisco, about as distant from middle America as a district can be.
Pelosi wrote to Democratic House members that in order "to be a strong voice for hard-working families and to uphold the values we cherish as Americans, House Democrats must be unified, strategic, and unwavering. These qualities took us to victory in 2006, and I believe they will do so again."
This is delusional. The election of 2006 was a decade-a decade of defeat-ago. By re-electing Pelosi, the Democrats have quite possibly doomed themselves to losing the House again in 2018. It is reasonable to suppose they will never regain the House under Pelosi's leadership, and most Democratic congressmen know this.
Democrats could not even take a first small step of firing Nancy Pelosi. Her re-election shows how unimaginative and clueless the House Democratic caucus really is. Worse, it shows that the Democrats cannot break the grip of bicoastal identity politics. They cannot understand the economic anxiety of those who voted for Trump. They cannot even begin to listen to these voters, let alone court them. They don't live in their world.