Eagle Tribune: Moulton Shows Bravery in Standing up to Pelosi
It’s clear the current officeholder and former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-California, will regain the seat she’s held since 2007 as she had two-thirds support of the House going in to today’s Democratic caucus vote.
That’s what makes it foolhardy, as Moulton, one of a handful of Democrats supporting Ryan, won’t be gaining any points with the Minority Leader of the House, who doles out committee assignments and has other powers over junior congressmen.
“Tim represents a new generation of leaders who are ready to make real change, rather than renew the status quo, and the future of our party demands that kind of leadership now more than ever,” Moulton said in a press statement.
A “new generation of leadership” is exactly what this country needs. The last election showed that the old leadership-creating system, on both sides of the aisle, simply does not work. The candidates put up by the Republicans were soundly rejected in one state primary after another as voters flooded to the bombastic, tell-it-like-it-is candidate Donald Trump. They shied away from the old names like Jeb Bush and John Kasich. They shunned the young conservatives like Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio. They simply liked the Donald.
On the Democratic side, things were even worse as no other candidates were even given a chance to run for president on the Democratic ticket, except for that old upstart Bernie Sanders, Independent senator from Vermont. Some tried nonetheless, like former Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee and former Virginia Senator Jim Webb. But they were hapless candidates. Cannon-fodder to the Clinton machine. Sadly, the candidates with the most credibility didn’t even run: Mass. Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Vice President Joe Biden. In retrospect, they would have been much better candidates up against Trump than either Sanders or Clinton.
So Moulton is right when he says: “The American people sent a very clear message on Nov. 8 that the status quo is not working. And now, the Democratic Party must respond. To take on the new challenges posed by President-elect Donald Trump, we Democrats in the House of Representatives must put ourselves in the best possible position to take back the majority in 2018.”
Will that happen with Pelosi? Maybe, but not likely. She is part of the problem, just as Hillary was part of the problem, just as the entire Democratic machine was part of the problem in forcing through a candidate that many Democrats had to hold their noses to vote for. Unfortunately for Clinton, many Democrats didn’t even hold their nose. They just voted for Trump.
Conventional wisdom has it that she lost “due in large part to white working-class voters showing up in droves for President-elect Donald Trump,” according to an article on Huffingtonpost.com. “They are precisely the kind of people leaders like Pelosi have been ignoring, Ryan argues, and precisely the kind of people he represents in his district.”
The Ohio Democrat told the Wall Street Journal last week: “This (2020) election is not going to be won at fundraisers on the coasts. “It’s going to be won in union halls in the industrial Midwest and fish fries in the Midwest and the South.”
Pelosi, in an interview with HuffPo, scoffed and mocked Ryan for his rebellion, claiming that what he was saying was just untrue, and that she often got invited to union halls.
Getting invited to union halls is symbolic, since unions make up such a small part of the electorate. But they are an important symbol nonetheless, showing that if you don’t appeal to the working- and middle-class in this country, you are going to lose. Trump proved that.
Article here.