Current Events > Is Nancy Pelosi good for the Democratic Party?

(+) Yeah! (+)

There's been quite a bit of discussion that she is driving the Democratic Party in the wrong direction that has been consistently costing Democratic seats. Many Democrats are getting fed up and want new leadership.

Meanwhile on the Republican side members like Newt Gingrich are saying "I hope they keep Pelosi for ten more years!"
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The Democratic party isn't good for the Democratic party, all of them are so out of touch it's no wonder the Republicans are sitting pretty, Trump and his like are selfish, opportunist businessmen hellbent on turning the country into a Game of thrones utopia and the Democrats are not offering any answers besides telling us how bad this shit is, they don't resonate with the people at all because all they're doing is helping turn us into complacent and cynical behavior, and of course the whole PC culture thing with stabbings, riots, racism against white people, glorying criminals and dirty money scandals. This vs the Republican party, the party who are so fucking good at PR they got people to believe in stupid shit like Alex Jones and Pizzagate!
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If Pelosi retired, it wouldn't leave Republicans nobody to criticize (at least not for long), it would just vault someone else into the limelight to be the figurehead bogeyman or bogeywoman. Whoever leads the caucus becomes famous, and becomes a lightning rod because they will become the face of the partisan fighting.

Look at Paul Ryan's favorability ratings - http://elections.huffingtonpost.com/pollster/paul-ryan-favorable-rating.
He was hovering around the break-even point (viewed equally favorable and unfavorable) until he became the Speaker in October 2015, and since then his favorability has tanked in a year and a half.

Mitch McConnell's favorability ratings are terrible - http://elections.huffingtonpost.com/pollster/mitch-mcconnell-favorable-rating (Republican Senate leader).

So were John Boehner's - http://elections.huffingtonpost.com/pollster/john-boehner-favorable-rating (former Republican House leader).

So were Harry Reid's - http://elections.huffingtonpost.com/pollster/harry-reid-favorable-rating (former Democratic Senate leader).

Chuck Schumer - http://elections.huffingtonpost.com/pollster/chuck-schumer-favorable-rating (new Democratic Senate leader) is brand new, but his net favorability has already dropped from -6 to -10 in a couple of months.
He is the new public face of the partisan battles in the Senate - http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/14/politics/chuck-schumer-department-of-justice-fbi/index.html and is being attacked in national media outlets for it -
http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/04/opinions/whats-gotten-into-chuck-schumer-callan/index.html

The fact of the matter is that in modern politics, whoever leads a partisan caucus will inevitably develop high name recognition and poor net favorability, and be used to attack other candidates. Whatever benefit in this area the party derives from her retiring would be short-lived.


Furthermore, Nancy Pelosi is really good at gathering money -
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/16/nancy-pelosi-fundraising_n_1677796.html
That seems like a useful skill even if she's unpopular. A replacement might not be as proficient in fund raising.

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Do you ever see Republicans saying it's time for people like McConnell or McCain to go? No? That's why they're winning, that's why they have power. Party over country might be an abhorrent philosophy but it still works, because a sound and unified party is nearly untouchable.
Pelosi is just fine where she is. As long as she's fit to serve, she is an asset to the Democratic party. The rest of the Democrats need to band together, not snipe at each other. That's exactly what Republicans and Putin want
This last highly publicized GA election had the Republicans attacking the Dem candidate by constantly attacking Pelosi. And now Dems are calling for Pelosi's head. Tell me that's not weakness. Dems are still getting played by high school mind games.

She did a great job getting dems to fall in line on important House votes in the past (and as mentioned even this year) so she is a good leader in that regard as well.


Republicans attack her precisely because of how formidable and brilliant she is, and then the casuals stroll in with nary a memory of all she's done and is capable of doing to say Dems should take her down just like the Republicans want them to do.
Under Boehner and now Ryan, she has outmaneuvered the majority party on a number of occasions to force favorable outcomes for the Democrats, when the situation seemed hopeless.
Throughout her career she has single handedly raised nearly half a billion dollars for the party, something no other congressman can compare to. Under the Bush years, she leveraged this and her remarkable political acumen to usher in a blue wave. She then used that majority under Obama to help perform the Herculean feat of healthcare expansion and reform, which multiple Supreme Court lawsuits and full Republican control of our government has not been able to undo. Obama gets all the credit due to the moniker Obamacare has been given, but she was the one who actually convinced him that it could still be done when he had lost hope following the Massachusetts special Senate election that fell to Republicans. She skillfully showed she was right.
If the Democrats were smart, they'd shut the fuck up and support one of their finest in the face of opposition rather than throw one of their best assets in the garbage bin just because Republicans attacked her and won a squeaker in a district that was heavily in their favor.

tl;dr: I think she's good. Could be better, could be much worse. But I think it's overblown right now
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Republicans attack their leadership all the time, did that author forget how boehner got pushed out and his chosen successor tanked because of a lack of internal support??? Ted Cruz literally called McConnell a liar on the floor of the Senate
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I gotta say I hope the Democrats keep Pelosi. She strongly endorses the madness that is breaking the Democratic Party apart.

I really doubt that the Democratic Party is going to thrive until they drop the SJW crowd.
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I think she says a lot about democrats in general, I hope they keep her as long as they can.
She's one of the dumbest people in congress and she's their leader and ex-speaker of the house.
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I strongly dislike Pelosi and wish she were out. Not only has she given wonderful soundbites to the opposition, such as "You'll have to pass it to see what's in it", but then you have her referring to Trump as Bush twice and the fact that she broadly stands for "business as usual", which has lost the democrats all control of government.

She did solid work in the past. Those days are behind her. Even she was planning to retire if Clinton won, which to me says that she knows she is past her prime, but with Trump's victory she seems to have decided that the needs of her branch of the party outweigh the needs of the party-at-large.
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They've gained seats in more elections under her than they've lost but I guess TC forgot to mention that. Not surprising coming from him.

Broseph_Stalin posted...

They've gained seats in more elections under her than they've lost but I guess TC forgot to mention that. Not surprising coming from him.

Not recently. But, if your attitude is keep sailing in the same direction I'm 100% with you. I hope she keeps doing exactly what she is doing.
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Nancy Pelosi is great at her job, and that job is herding Congressional Democrats. She's done that well since becoming Speaker in 2006, and I hope she's Speaker in 2018.
Also, LOL if you think Steny Hoyer would be half as good as she is and wouldn't become the dumbest, most liberal, most partisan person ever the moment he became Minority Leader of the Democratic caucus.

Nomadic View posted...

Not recently.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_House_of_Representatives_elections,_2016

Broseph_Stalin posted...

They've gained seats in more elections under her than they've lost but I guess TC forgot to mention that. Not surprising coming from him.

no they haven't. They've lost 13 seats overall since 2004
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