Pelosi dodges on need for new Democratic leadership

House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), confronted by calls for new leadership in the Democratic Party, says experience is just as important as having a fresh face.

Pelosi, who became House minority leader in January of 2003 and served a stint as Speaker from 2007 to 2011, says there’s room for new leaders in the Democratic Party.

But she’s brushing off calls for change at the top of the party, which she leads with Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), who was first elected to Congress in 1980.

{mosads}Asked by NBC host Chuck Todd on Sunday whether Democratic leaders have lost touch with working-class voters in the Midwest, Pelosi argued the party is more attuned to their concerns than President Trump.

“I want to go back to the issue of Democrats having lost touch with the Rust Belt,” Todd said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

“Does the Democratic Party need new leaders to touch base on this stuff?” he asked. “Whether it’s Hillary Clinton, yourself, Chuck Schumer. You’ve all been in power a long time,” he said.

Pelosi argued the party needs experience just as much.

“We have plenty of room for all kinds of leadership at every level. Right now we need experience as well as new leadership,” she said.

She expressed some sympathy for junior lawmakers such as Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio) — who waged an unsuccessful bid for her job after the election — who want a change.

“I was a new leader when I emerged myself, so I’m all for that,” she noted, recalling her ascension to the House Democrats’ top leadership post 14 years ago.

She later became the first woman to serve as Speaker and took the lead in pushing President Obama’s biggest legislative initiatives — healthcare reform, a cap and trade program for carbon emissions, the fiscal stimulus and Wall Street reform — through the lower chamber.

Instead of mulling a possible need to shake up the party’s leadership structure, Pelosi argued that Democrats care more about the economic livelihoods of Rust Belt voters than Trump, who won Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Indiana.

“The American people had the impression that Donald Trump was going to give them the leverage when he became president. What did he do? Right from the start is go right to his friends on Wall Street,” she said.