The Campaign to Oust Nancy Pelosi Is Looking Increasingly Lame

The plot against Nancy Pelosi reached its most public phase on Monday afternoon, as 16 current and incoming House Democrats released a letter calling for her replacement as leader of their caucus.

The letter is dominated by members on the right of the caucus, such as Jim Cooper of Tennessee and Seth Moulton and Stephen Lynch of Massachusetts. (Cooper is a member of the right-leaning Blue Dog group, and Lynch is famously anti-abortion.) It thanks Pelosi for her service but adds that “Democrats ran and won on a message of change.”

Splinter’s official policy, as it happens, is also that Pelosi should leave. But it is also Splinter’s policy that she not be replaced thanks to a cabal of white male conservatives who think she’s too much of a “San Francisco liberal.” (As we’ve written, Barbara Lee would be a great replacement.) How they could think that of a woman who was quoted just today saying this to the New York Times is, to put it mildly, puzzling:

There were a lot of Democrats, I suggested, who believed that bipartisanship had been rendered antique in the Trump era. “Yeah,” Pelosi replied, smirking, “and I have those who want to be for impeachment and for abolishing ICE” — Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, the federal law-enforcement agency spearheading Trump’s crackdown on immigration. “Two really winning issues for us, right? In the districts we have to win? I don’t even think they’re the right thing to do. If the evidence from Mueller is compelling, it should be compelling for Republicans as well, and that may be a moment of truth. But that’s not where we are.”

Fortunately for those who would not like to see the House Democrats pulled even further into the bad place than they already are under Pelosi, it appears that this campaign might end in a whimper.