Democrats: "Our Brand is Toxic"

After the Democrats failed to win the special election in Georgia last week, some Democrats are calling for House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi to step aside.  One of Pelosi’s most vocal critics is Rep. Tim Ryan, who tried to unseat her as Minority Leader last year.  Ryan represents Ohio’s 13^th Congressional District, which includes the former industrial powerhouse of Youngstown.  Ryan’s district provides quite a contrast to Nancy Pelosi’s Silicon Valley-based Congressional District, which has managed to do quite well in the age of globalization; if you ignore the fact that her “enlightened” home city thinks that public urination is acceptable. When asked by CNN’s Don Lemon if he thought Nancy Pelosi was more toxic than President Trump, Congressman Ryan replied “In some areas of the country, yes.”  Pelosi appears to be brushing off the idea that she is in jeopardy of losing her position as House Minority Leader; referring to herself as a “master legislator” and a “strategic, politically astute leader.”  Pelosi is probably better described as a “master fundraiser” than a “master legislator” but her fundraising skills, which are often used as the justification for keeping her in the position of Minority Leader, have proven useless in the most recent elections. 

 

Many Democrats appear quite surprised that their brand is toxic; probably thinking  that the “unhinged” President Trump would ensure a toxic Republican brand.  The Democrats, along with their allies in the mainstream media, are doing everything they can to intoxicate the Republican brand; primarily by dragging out the Russia investigation, which few people outside of the beltway actually care about.  Rather than focus on destroying Republicans, they should be focusing on rebuilding their own brand.  Whether or not that means getting rid of Nancy Pelosi is ultimately up to the Congressional Democrats.              

 

As the attacks from fellow Democrats continue to pile on, Republicans in Congress and conservative commentators have actually rushed to Pelosi’s defense; arguing that she should remain in her position in House Minority Leader.  This is not because they like Pelosi; but because they enjoy seeing the Democrats lose.  President Trump weighed in on the Democratic Civil War on Twitter, saying “I certainly hope the Democrats do not force Nancy P out.  That would be very bad for the Republican Party – and please let Cryin’ Chuck stay.”  Republicans have accumulated massive electoral victories by tying Democratic House Candidates to Pelosi, who is far to the left of the everyday American.    

 

Associating Democratic House Candidates with Pelosi has worked quite well for Republicans.  During Pelosi’s tenure as the Top Democrat in the U.S. House of Representatives, the Democrats have lost over 1,000 seats in state legislatures and 60 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. The Democrats would probably blame some of these losses on gerrymandering but that still fails to explain why the Republicans now hold two-thirds of the nation’s governorships. More than one-third of the Democrats currently sitting in the House of Representatives come from one of three states: California, New York, and Massachusetts.  More than one-half of all Democratic-held seats in the lower chamber are in either the northeast’s highly populated Acela corridor or the Pacific Coast, sometimes referred to as the left coast.  The map below, courtesy of Third Way, helps to put those numbers into perspective. 

 

 

  

It is probably tempting for some Republicans to declare victory and argue that the Democrats have become completely irrelevant.  That would be a catastrophic mistake.  That’s exactly what Hillary Clinton did.  She got complacent.  She thought for sure that Candidate Trump’s comments about Khizr Khan and the Access Hollywood tape would kill his chances at becoming the 45^th President of the United States.  This overconfidence probably explains why she didn’t bother to campaign in Wisconsin; she thought she had it in the bag.  President Trump sensed his opponent’s weakness and pulled out all the stops in the final weeks of the 2016 Presidential Election campaign by visiting states that few thought he had any chance of winning; including Michigan and Wisconsin.  These dividends paid off as he carried both of these states on Election Night.

 

Republicans are also making a mistake if they assume that people are going to vote for them with no strings attached.  If the Republicans in Congress fail to deliver on some of their key campaign promises, the 2018 midterms could very well be a wipeout.  Assuming the Democrats decide not to shake up their leadership team, that would mean Speaker Pelosi; the thought of which should make every conservative cringe.  Republicans should do everything they can to keep their majorities in both houses of Congress, especially as rumors about the retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy continue to circulate.  

 

So, it’s obvious that the Democratic brand is in crisis, right now.  But the pendulum can shift quickly.  Republicans were at rock bottom after the 2008 elections, holding only 40 Senate seats and fewer than 180 House seats.  However, they rebounded in 2010; winning back control of the House and picking up seats in the Senate.  While Republicans should celebrate their electoral successes, they should not take them for granted.  They should fight for every vote and never stray from their campaign promises to drain the swamp and Make America Great Again.