Although they may have won back the White House from President Donald Trump, there was little else that ended up swinging Democrats way during the 2020 election.
Faced with such a historic failure, would the Democratic Party re-elect their former leaders… including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi?
Do this with your tongue and sleep like a baby [Sponsored]
As bad as the 2020 election turned out, the Democrats decided on Wednesday that they hadn’t had enough.
House Democrats nominated Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday as the speaker to lead them into Joe Biden’s would-be presidency. Shortly afterward, she suggested that these would be her final two years in the post.
Democrats, scattered around the country, used a voice vote to pick Pelosi to guide a more narrow and divided House majority. It was the party’s first virtual leadership election, a response to the coronavirus pandemic.
In an attempt to win over skeptics in the Democratic Party, Pelosi, D-Calif., came close to affirming that these next two years leading the House would be her last at a later news conference.
Asked about her longevity, she cited her statement two years ago when she said she’d abide by a move to limit her speakership then to four more years.
“I don’t want to limit any leverage I may have, but I made the statement,” Pelosi, 80, told reporters Wednesday. Even so, she stopped short of explicitly saying these would be her final two years in the post.
Is your cellphone affecting your vision? [Sponsored]
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., and No. 3 party leader Jim Clyburn, D-S.C., Congress’ highest ranking Black member, were reelected to their positions, like Pelosi without opposition. Clyburn revived Biden’s faltering bid for the Democratic presidential nomination this year by helping him win the South Carolina primary, a turnaround moment in Biden’s campaign.
The full House will formally elect the new speaker when the new Congress convenes in early January, shortly before the Jan. 20 presidential inauguration. Hoyer’s and Clyburn’s jobs are party positions that don’t need House approval.
But with votes still being tallied in this month’s elections, 10 incumbent House Democrats have been defeated, dashing expectations of adding seats and damaging party morale.
Democrats were on track to have perhaps a 222-213 majority, one of the smallest in decades.
This has sparked finger-pointing, with progressives saying the party failed to adequately win over minority and young liberal voters. Moderates say that they were hurt by far-left initiatives like defunding the police and that Pelosi should have struck a preelection stimulus deal with the White House.
Many Democrats continue calling for fresh leadership. Pelosi and Hoyer have been No. 1 and 2 House Democrats since 2003, while Clyburn rose to the No. 3 ranks in 2007. Pelosi and Clyburn are 80, Hoyer is 81.
Sponsored: In 1944, an experiment was done in this Nazi medical center…
When the House elects its new speaker, Pelosi will need the majority of votes cast by both parties. Since nearly all Republicans are expected to back their leader, Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., Pelosi can afford to lose only a few Democrats.
When Democrats won back the House in 2018, 32 of them voted against Pelosi’s nomination as speaker. But that was a larger majority than this one, giving her more margin for error then.
By the time the full House elected her in January 2019, she’d whittled down her opposition and just 13 Democrats voted against her or voted “present.”
Of the 13 Democrats who opposed Pelosi in 2019, two have been defeated and one, Rep. Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey, became a Republican. That leaves 10 Democrats who voted against her, though another, New York’s Anthony Brindisi, may still lose his election.
The Associated Press contributed to this article