Don’t Dump Nancy Pelosi

The fight over who will be the next speaker of the House got more serious on Wednesday. At least, I guess it did. It still doesn’t make any sense. Why are a handful of Democrats, led by Seth Moulton of Massachusetts and Tim Ryan of Ohio, revolting against Nancy Pelosi?

Some say it's because Pelosi is unpopular among voters. If so, it's hard to imagine anything more foolish. Congressional leaders are rarely popular – Paul Ryan, the current speaker, certainly isn’t – and Republicans will inevitably demonize whoever Democrats wind up choosing as speaker. However poorly Pelosi fares in nationwide polls, moreover, Democrats have fresh evidence that she isn’t electoral poison: They just won the House with her as minority leader, after all.

Another reason offered for rejecting Pelosi is that she, and the rest of the Democratic leadership, are blocking advancement for other members of the House. This is true enough. Pelosi, Steny Hoyer and James Clyburn have been occupying the top three spots for a long time. But opposing Pelosi on those grounds seems rather short-sighted and petty.

If there are any other reasons, we haven’t heard them. Is Pelosi representing the Democratic caucus poorly? Negotiating badly on its behalf? Are there policy differences?

Meanwhile, by all accounts Pelosi still has the loyalty of the overwhelming majority of the caucus. The dissenters say they’ll refuse to vote for her in the full House, a tactic that the House Freedom Caucus attempted to use against Paul Ryan and John Boehner in recent speaker elections. But that’s basically a minority blackmailing the majority, and it’s a very risky way of settling party differences.

Now it’s still not clear where any of this is going. It’s possible that the revolt will simply fail. It’s possible that they’ll reach a deal, perhaps involving a public declaration from Pelosi that this will be her last term. What’s clear is that most Democrats (and most outside observers) consider Pelosi to be one of the best party leaders in the modern era (that is, since around 1975). It sure seems like the party should hesitate before dumping such an accomplished asset.

1. Charles Stewart III at the Monkey Cage on why counting votes takes time and why Democrats tend to gain overall (but not everywhere) after election night. I’ll add: While there are serious arguments, albeit ones I don’t buy, that everyone should vote at the same time, I’m aware of no case that all the votes should be counted within a narrow window. As I’ve said, however, the news media needs to do a much better job of explaining how regular vote-counting works these days.

2. Also at the Monkey Cage, Rebecca Best and Jeremy M. Teigen on female veterans in the new Congress.

3. Melissa Deckman on Republican women in Congress after 2018.

4. Dan Drezner on Brexit.

5. My Bloomberg Opinion colleague Al Hunt on why Democrats should insist on governing experience in their presidential nominee.

6. And I’m not sure I agree with Jonathan Chait about how likely it is that Republicans in Congress will stay loyal to Trump. But I otherwise strongly agree with his argument: Trump’s scandals are partly why he has been so unpopular to date, and they could cost him the presidency in 2020 even if there’s nothing close to impeachment.

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