On Tuesday, the House Democratic Caucus-elect will meet to select its leaders for the upcoming Congress.  Both before and since the election, there has been discussion about whether the caucus should pick Nancy Pelosi as its candidate for Speaker of the House.  It is hard to think of a credible reason for removing a leader who just had a tremendous victory other than the Democrat’s usual flaw of forming a circular firing squad.  While Representative Pelosi — like most leaders of both parties — currently has a negative favorability rating, that goes along with the job and whomever would replace her would soon have similar numbers.

What is disheartening about this discussion is the failure to look at what does need to change — the rest of the leadership team.  One of the reasons for this lack of discussion is how difficult it is to replace any of them.  The current team represents a decent cross-section of the senior Democrats in the House.  That will make it difficult to challenge any one of the leaders.  But the problem is how long these individuals have been in the leadership.   Our senior leadership is getting too senior, and it needs to renew and revitalize.

Start with likely majority leader Stenny Hoyer, Representative from Maryland.  Representative Hoyer will turn 80 in the next Congress.  He has been in Congress for thirty-seven years.  He became Chair of the Democratic Conference (technically the number four position when Democrats are in the majority and the number three position when Democrats are in the minority) in 1989 and served in that position until 1994.  In 2002, when Nancy Pelosi became minority leader, Representative Hoyer (who had earlier that year lost the race for minority whip to Representative Pelosi) became the new minority whip and has been the number two for the last sixteen years.  It is not unusual in most democracies for the loser in a leadership battle to become the new deputy.  What is unusual is for that person to keep that position for sixteen years. Continue Reading...