Pelosi defends leadership following special election loss

Pelosi said Thursday that she has “always featured the young 30-somethings”.

When pressed to give a name of who might fill that void, Rice said, “I look to a lot of my colleagues now”.

Fueling their fears is Democrat Jon Ossoff’s loss in a hotly contested House race in the northern Atlanta suburbs. His Republican opponent, and the victor Tuesday evening, Karen Handel raised about $4 million.

And it’s not even just her fellow Democratic lawmakers – a 2013 Gallup poll found Pelosi was the best known but least liked Congressional leader, and polling from earlier this week found that she had a lower approval rating than President Donald Trump.

Pelosi allies have pushed back at the blame game and pointed to the improvement Democrats had in other special elections in Kansas, Montana and SC as evidence that their efforts to harness the resistance against Trump was working.

Pelosi told members at the Wednesday morning meeting about Georgia, “unfortunately this is a loss for us, but it’s not good news for them”, referring to Republicans.

The corrupt, liberal media hoped that by driving this essential must-win narrative along a bumpy path, the Democratic party would have a win. This special election was the Democratic Party’s Gettysburg. Almost 260,000 people voted on Tuesday, or about 58 percent of the district’s registered voters. That’s true. But then again, House Republicans voted to repeal Obamacare more than 50 times as it was. Cox, a 47-year-old Realtor and mother of two daughters, co-founded a group this year called “Pave It Blue” focused on backing Ossoff’s campaign and other red seats that could be poachable.

The president hailed the sweep as a victory, saying this at a Wednesday rally in Iowa: “The truth is, people love us”.

Yet neither Ossoff’s campaign nor the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee attempted to tie Republican victor Karen Handel to Trump in a television ad even once. To pull this off Handel had to keep her distance from Trump. It’s true that Handel’s charisma is “limited” and that her campaign was given a big boost by the Republicans’ successful efforts to paint Ossoff as a “dangerous liberal” who had been “hand-picked” by the reviled House Democratic leader, Nancy Pelosi. So today we’re focusing on what Democrats must do to win back the people who were theirs – starting with the party’s finest asset, its loyal, true-believing supporters.

“If you were talking about a company that was posting losing numbers, if you were talking about any sports team that was losing time and time again, changes would be made, right?” Trump won that district handily in 2016, yet Democrat Archie Parnell came within a few points of defeating Republican Ralph Norman. Since Election Day 2016, Republicans are 5-0 in special elections.

Just by lending your expertise and gravitas, you may be able to imaginatively (and substantively) inspire your leader-lite party to fight for working people who are about to be shafted by the GOP plan.

From the local perspective, though, the election wasn’t so closely tied to the controversial commander in chief.

When it was all said and done, the Democrats were likely their own undoing.

The victories could boost Republicans’ confidence as they struggle to advance health and tax legislation that has been bogged down by infighting and investigations into whether Trump’s campaign colluded with Russian Federation in last year’s presidential election.

“I think you’d have to be an idiot to think we could win the House with Pelosi at the top”, said Rep. Filemon Vela, D-Texas, who supported Pelosi in her last leadership race, Politico reported.

“It’s fair to say nearly every cent has been raised through the prism of, ‘we need to hold the Republican majority to prevent Nancy Pelosi from passing her far-left agenda, ‘” said Jesse Hunt, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee – the House GOP’s campaign arm.

A little less than half said Trump was not a factor in their decision, while 14 percent said their vote, in part, was meant to show their support for the president.

Her column was headlined, “Want to Know What America’s Thinking?”