Nancy Pelosi Faces Heat From Democrats After Georgia Loss

As Democrats point fingers in the wake of Jon Ossoff’s loss in a Georgia special election on Tuesday, some of them are aimed at Nancy Pelosi, the party’s longtime House leader, who appeared in almost every GOP attack ad broadcast in the most expensive House race in history.

A number of Democrats are renewing their calls for Pelosi to step aside, demanding a change to the trio of septuagenarians that have been leading the House Democratic caucus for years.

Picking up on the chatter against Pelosi, President Donald Trump piled on, tweeting on Thursday that he hoped Pelosi wasn’t dethroned (and that Sen. Charles Schumer would remain Senate Democratic leader) because that would be bad for the GOP.

As one of his first moves after declaring his candidacy against Rep. Mark Sanford (R-SC), Democrat Joe Cunningham tweeted, “If elected, I will not vote for Nancy Pelosi for speaker. Time to move forward and win again.”

A handful of House Democrats made similar calls on Wednesday, with Rep. Kathleen Rice of Long Island, New York, appearing on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” to say: “Her time has come and gone.”

“The rationale for getting new leadership is we are losing and we have been losing since 2010 — that’s it,” Rice said.

Rice, like others who spoke out, backed a failed challenge to Pelosi earlier this year from Rep. Tim Ryan (D-OH).

Ryan himself told MSNBC that it will be “very hard” for Democrats to win back the House with Pelosi at the helm, since candidates have to “carry this very toxic Democratic brand.”

“You see these commercials that tie these candidates to leader Pelosi week in and week out in the last several months. That still moves the needle,” he said.

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