Will Pelosi take the fall for Democratic Party failures?

The San Francisco Chronicle reports:

As Democrats try to piece together what went wrong in last week’s election debacle, some are taking a second look at how much blame should be placed on House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.

On Tuesday, the San Francisco Democrat agreed to push back House leadership elections to Nov. 30 after at least two dozen members said they wanted more time to pick through last week’s disappointment, which saw Democrats pick up only six seats in the House. Days before the election, Pelosi — who has led House Democrats for more than a dozen years — said they could win up to 20, which still would have left left them 10 short of winning back control of the House.

The decision to delay the leadership election nearly two weeks and possibly put up a challenger to Pelosi is a sign of how deeply Democrats are soul-searching after last week’s election that saw Republicans win control of the White House and retain its majority in the Senate and House. While Pelosi became the first female speaker of the House in 2006 and had a huge hand in winning passage of the Affordable Care Act, Democrats have never fully recovered under her leadership from losing 63 seats in the 2010 midterm election. They have remained in the minority ever since.

Now, much as a sports team considers replacing a popular longtime coach after several losing seasons, Pelosi is again on the hot seat. She easily beat back a challenge to her leadership after the 2010 midterms.


“We just had a shellacking. We just got a shellacking last Tuesday,” said Rep. G.K. Butterfield, chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus and a Pelosi backer, on Tuesday. “We got an unexpected defeat, and we’ve got to recalibrate it and decide how we go forward.”

Nancy Pelosi is becoming a relic of the past.