8th December 2016, 8:56 PM
Quote:Also, how good a job did she do really? She had the party favor Hillary from the start, which didn't turn out well, and led a party-wide policy of "meeting them halfway" for far too long, which hasn't helped,Led a policy? No, that was Obama's policy. Pelosi did go along with it, yes, but the president is the leader of their party, and Obama is always far too willing to give up too much too easily for too little gain, if anything, because of his admirable but flawed idea that the Republicans can still be reasoned with like they used to be in the past. On the other hand, for Pelosi in specific, because the House has fewer ways to slow legislation than the Senate, this issue is much bigger in the Senate than the House; all you need is a majority to pass anything in the House, after all. Still, sure, I'd have liked to see her maybe go in the direction Harry Reid did over the course of the last 6 years, towards taking the Republicans on more directly. She's done some of that, but he's more outpoken for sure in some good ways. (He'll be missed... though at least we held the seat.)
So yeah, sure, in that she did go along with that I disagree with some things Pelosi did, and it's really bad that none of the party's leadership managed to figure out how to get liberals to vote in off-year elections or do anything effective to head off the Republican wave of 2010 that stopped so much progress in its tracks, but when it comes to policy and leadership in the House, which is her main job, she's mostly done a good job. Despite what I said above, I can't think of any major policy or House caucus management issue that are Pelosi's fault (and not Obama's, or what have you) and are bad enough to remove her over, at least not in recent years. If there was a time she was going to leave after a failure, wouldn't it have to be after 2010, when we lost our House majority and so much more? That's something she's much more responsible for than Presidential races.
As for this year, at least we did gain a few seats, but House and Senate races have become MUCH more closely tied to their states' presidential races than they ever were before -- note how for maybe the first time ever, every single Senate race this year went to the same party as the Presidential races in those states went. The Democratic turnout effort was mostly decent this year, but could not make up for the large numbers of Trump voters who probably hadn't voted recently and such. For instance, here in Maine, all year the focus was on district 2 (the northern, more conservative district) because the party knew it'd be a hard race, but despite that Trump and the Republican congressman won. I don't know if there's much more the Dems could have done up there...
Quote:. Say what you will about the system being gamed against the dems, but that was true back in the 2008 election and true in the 2012 election too. You can't use that as an excuse. The democratic party was led by someone who thought that Hillary was the candidate people would love enough to defeat Trump, and they were wrong. That's reality. Yes, Hillary does walk away with the popular vote, and yes, the electoral college hasn't been needed since the earliest days of our nation, but Obama STILL WON twice even with those problems in place. Hillary just wasn't charismatic enough to win where she needed to win.2008 was over the moment the economic collapse happened, that ended the Republicans' chances. As for 2012, that was competitive, but incumbency helps a lot, that helped Obama win.
Quote: How would changing who leads the party change how the party is run? That's what we're going with here? It would, if nothing else, at least show a commitment to change. As it stands, could you provide me even the slightest evidence the party is actually going to chance in any significant way? I could accept keeping the same leader if some plan for changing the course of the party was put into place, after all. That would be something, but this, no, this was nothing.This is one problem the party has right now, actually -- where is the next generation of Democratic leaders? Because of how badly decimated the Dems are at the state level, there are so few promising up-and-coming people in our party... it's a big issue for sure. I really hope our next DNC chair has some good ideas.