Some Democrats now rejecting Pelosi's continued leadership, say she 'needs to take a seat'

By 
 November 19, 2024

For the past two decades, as multiple presidents and candidates have come and gone, the one relative constant at the helm of the Democratic Party has been former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), but some in the party are now ready to move past her extended era of power and control.

Now, as the party copes with electoral losses across the board, some Democrats have grown frustrated with Pelosi's blame-shifting when she herself bears substantial responsibility and believe it is past time for her to fully step aside from her leadership role, the New York Post reported.

The somewhat surprising but long overdue pushback against Pelosi by some Democrats comes as the former Speaker, 84, has revealed her intent to run for re-election and stick around Congress for at least another two years despite previously vowing to clear the way for new leaders to take charge of the party.

Pelosi blames Biden for Democratic losses

Former Speaker Pelosi has largely acknowledged and been credited with playing a lead role in convincing President Joe Biden to end his re-election bid earlier this year in July, after which Vice President Kamala Harris replaced him as the Democratic nominee and then lost in stunning fashion to President-elect Donald Trump.

Yet, in a recent interview with The New York Times, Pelosi appeared to suggest that the Democratic Party's woes in this month's elections -- they lost control of the White House, Senate, and House -- is the fault of the outgoing elderly president.

"Had [Biden] gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race" as part of an "open primary" in which a nominee other than Harris might have been chosen, Pelosi explained.

Pelosi "needs to take a seat" and "understand what her new role is"

The appearance of former Speaker Pelosi casting blame on President Biden for the party's losses, particularly after she helped orchestrate his ouster, was too much for some Democrats to take, according to Axios, and they are now saying it is time for her to go away or fade into the background, as she previously claimed she would but hasn't yet done, as she continues to stick around and overshadow purported House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY).

"She needs to take a seat," one unnamed senior Democratic legislator told the outlet. "Making scattershot comments is not just unhelpful, it's damaging."

"Hakeem has been tremendously graceful and respectful of her, but I don't think she is being respectful of him," another anonymous Democrat, this one a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, said. "I understand that this is a difficult transition for her, not being the leader, but she is not. She needs to understand what her new role is."

That message was further reinforced when Axios reporter Stef Knight, during an appearance on CNN, revealed that multiple House Democrats have complained that Pelosi is still trying to be the party's leader and has "too much star power" that she is reluctant to relinquish.

Pelosi is "finished" and it is time for her to go

New York Post columnist Miranda Devine, in an op-ed for Fox News, suggested that former Speaker Pelosi, and in particular her reputation as a "master strategist," were for all intents and purposes "finished" as a leader following the Democratic Party's losses of the White House, Senate, and House in the recently concluded election cycle.

"Her saccharine-coated 'Mean Girls' style of partisan viciousness and deviousness turns out to have done nothing for her party but postpone the inevitable reckoning between the radical left and common-sense moderates. Unfortunately for the Dems, most of the latter have taken a hike under Pelosi’s reign," Devine wrote.

"If the GOP is Trump’s party, the Democratic Party is Pelosi’s -- and what a viper’s nest of blame-shifting and rancor it has become, as they all blame each other for their humiliating defeat at the hands of the man they derided as a Nazi," she continued. "Most Americans didn’t agree, and now the Democrats and their media handmaidens stand exposed as frauds and liars."

"All her hatred, the impeachments and lawfare and jailing of Trump allies, served neither her party nor the country. Trump is back, better than ever, her party is in ruins, and the country has been through hell for four years," the columnist said at another point and concluded, "She needs to ride off into the sunset, for everyone’s sake."

" A free people [claim] their rights, as derived from the laws of nature."
Thomas Jefferson