It took less than 12 hours after House Democrats lost a pair of special elections last week, for one outspoken Democratic congressman to blame the losses on the Democratic Party’s toxic brand, while calling for House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s resignation. A few additional Democrats joined Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio), appearing on several national political TV shows with similar messages.
While their disappointment is understandable — Democrats have gone 0 for 4 in Congressional special elections this year — to fill seats opened by Trump administration appointments — Ryan’s purely tactical recommendation, without any accompanying strategy for growing the party, underlines a much deeper problem the Democratic Party has yet to address.
{mosads}Since America’s political news media love a conflict, especially an intra-party conflict, broadcast and print media stories have continued to appear, making among other assertions that, “Pelosi is tarnishing her party, the Democrats, as well as her own legacy,” by refusing calls to resign. This very unseemly piling on, feeds the Republican attack machine, while also sowing doubt and dissension among millions of Democratic Party activists, contributors and candidates.
Public calls for one congressional leader to resign can be better understood by considering the inverted pyramid theory. As former presidential candidate Sen. Bill Bradley (D-N.J.) perceptively observed 12 years ago, “to understand how the Democratic Party works, picture an inverted pyramid. Imagine a pyramid balancing precariously on its point, which is the presidential candidate.”
“Democrats choose this approach, I believe, because we are still hypnotized by Jack Kennedy, and the promise of a charismatic leader who can change America by the strength and style of his personality. The trouble is that every four years the party splits and rallies around several different individuals at once. Opponents in the primaries then exaggerate their differences and leave the public confused about what Democrats believe,” Bradley wrote in 2005, three years before the election of President Obama.
Since Obama is no longer president, calling for the resignation of the current senior Democratic leader demonstrates the tremendous weakness of the inverted pyramid. Truthfully, Pelosi through her personal tireless hard work and commitment has helped countless Democratic candidates succeed all over the country for decades. She is also widely acknowledged as one of the most substantive legislators in modern American politics. But if the entire party is relying on a charismatic savior, then targeting that person is the obvious strategy of the opposition.
Demonizing and delegitimizing Democratic Party leaders has been page one of Republican Party playbook up through today. President Trump continues via Twitter to denigrate Obama since it still helps stir up the base. Now it seems like a few Democratic elected officials have bought into Republican tactical demonization themselves! The strategic challenge Pelosi’s critics are failing to address is the public confusion about what Democrats believe.
The key to growing the Democratic Party, attracting the millions of newly engaged Americans who’ve been marching/demonstrating/engaging since the January 21st Women’s March, is to clear up this confusion.
In states like Colorado, independent voters expect candidates to earn every vote in every race; they don’t vote a party-line ticket. A focus on Democratic accomplishments should use the language of values, as retired UC Berkeley professor George Lakoff has been advocating since 2006. Conveniently Democrats have a tremendous record of accomplishments since the 1930s which are rooted in American progressive values!
Growing the Democratic Party is not just the responsibility of congressional leadership, it’s equally and, maybe more importantly, the responsibility of state Democratic leaders at all levels. Taking back state legislatures and governorships ahead of the 2022 redistricting – playing the long game as Republicans have done over the past twenty years – should be at the heart of Democratic strategy.
How can Democrats accomplish that if they hound Nancy Pelosi out of leadership? It’s a ridiculous idea which should be roundly denounced and rejected.
Ken Toltz was the 2000 Democratic nominee for Colorado’s 6th Congressional district and is now a prospective Democratic candidate for Colorado’s 2nd Congressional district. Follow him on Twitter @KToltz.
The views expressed by contributors are their own and are not the views of The Hill.