Pelosi

Stories have appeared over the last few days about the odds of Nancy Pelosi resuming the role of speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. A letter signed by 16 Democrats opposed to Pelosi was made public yesterday.

Sixteen is not a lot, but Pelosi critics assert that it is the tip of the iceberg; that though no challenger has stepped into the ring to fight it out for speaker, Pelosi will not be able to reach the magic number 218 when the new congress is sworn in, and it is only then that Pelosi's replacement will emerge.

Perry Bacon of FiveThirtyEight runs through the possibilities this morning in "Who Could Become Speaker Of The House If Pelosi Doesn’t?" Bacon thinks Pelosi is vulnerable. And that she is. But she is not nearly as vulnerable as her opposition. Pelosi delivered a blue wave (currently predicted to be Dems +40) significantly larger than the one in 2006 that made her speaker the first go-round.

The one turd in Pelosi's punch bowl is that many Democratic freshman campaigned against Pelosi in 2018, promising to vote against her if elected. Now that they're elected one of the first votes they take can't be to renege on a prominent campaign promise.

Whether there are enough freshmen who took an anti-Pelosi pledge to block her from 218 remains to be seen. It's probably the main reason Bacon considers Pelosi's demise a distinct possibility.

Pelosi has to go. No doubt about it. The next two years are still going to be "All Trump, All the Time." And with McConnell running the show in the senate, a Democratic speaker is going to be reduced to a GOP foil. It would certainly be nice to have some new leadership heading into a presidential election. The problem is the Democratic Party is not able to provide that leadership.