OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
House Speaker and California Rep. Nancy Pelosi could be nearing the end of her career in a way that she did not want to.
After ruling the Democrat Party for decades, including two stints as the Speaker of the House, Pelosi could be ending her career as one of, if not the most, unpopular politicians in the nation, Breitbart News reported.
The leader of congressional Democrats has dropped double digits in approval rating since February per the latest National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) battleground survey results, a whole new low for Pelosi that further complicates Democrats’ efforts to pass President Joe Biden’s agenda and save their majorities in the U.S. House and Senate next year.
The results, obtained by Breitbart News, show that Pelosi has fallen to just a 36 percent approval rating across congressional battleground districts—with a solid majority of 57 percent of Americans disapproving of her performance. This October battleground poll, therefore, means she is 21 points underwater—a full 10 percent worse than she was in the NRCC’s February survey, when Pelosi was just 11 percent underwater.
“It is impressive that the least popular politician in the country has somehow managed to become even more unpopular,” Mike Berg, a spokesmanfor the NRCC, said to Breitbart News. “We are going to ensure voters know that Nancy Pelosi is the running mate for every vulnerable Democrat who backed her for Speaker of the House.”
With a razor-thin majority in the House, Pelosi’s unpopularity could be an anchor around the Democrat Party in the 2022 midterm elections and further shrink their presence in the House of Representatives enough to give Republicans the majority.
And fellow Democrats are starting to sense that their majority is perilously close to ending.
“We are not going to do what we need to do next year until we build enough intestinal fortitude to start operating a little outside or beyond our comfort zones,” Democrat Rep. James Clyburn, the third-ranking Democrat in the House said at a virtual event with the Charleston Jewish Federation on Wednesday, Jewish Insider reported.
“We’re not there yet. I’m hopeful that we can get there. Will we ever get there? That remains to be seen,” he said.
“I think we can. I’m not sure we will,” the representative said. “My dad used to say to me all the time, ‘Wherever there is a will, there is a way.’ I’m not too sure that Democrats have yet developed the will to win in 2022.”
He appeared to blame progressive Democrats and not Pelosi for the issues the party is facing.
“Progressives have got to feel like they can take a chance on moderates. Get outside of their comfort zone. Moderates have got to feel the same way about progressives,” he said. “And between those two, you’ve got the New [Democrats], you’ve got the Congressional Black Caucus, you’ve got the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, you’ve got the Asian and Pacific Islanders, all of us operating within our comfort zone.”
The news comes weeks after two long-time Democrat representatives called it quits ahead of the 2022 midterm elections.
“Reps. Mike Doyle (D-Pa.) and David Price (D-N.C.) will not seek reelection, they will announce later Monday,” Politico reported earlier in the day.
“Doyle, 68, was first elected in 1994 and is a close ally of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. The 81-year-old Price, who won his seat in 1996, is a member of the powerful House Appropriations Committee,” the outlet continued, adding:
Other top Democrats in recent weeks have also said they plan on calling it quits and won’t be seeking reelection next year, as The Daily Caller News Foundation reports:
Democratic Rep. John Yarmuth of Kentucky, the chair of the House Budget Committee, announced Tuesday that he will forgo any re-election effort.
Yarmuth, first elected in 2007 and the only Democrat in Kentucky’s congressional delegation, has been a central player in helping to craft President Joe Biden’s multitrillion-dollar budget bill. His retirement comes just over a year before the 2022 midterms, a potentially difficult cycle for Democrats who seek to defend their slim House majority.
“It’s been an incredible journey since my first campaign in 2006 until now,” Yarmuth said. “I will continue to fight for Louisville in Washington for another 15 months, and then, I will retire from Congress.”
