Dems tell Pelosi to 'take a seat' with lawmakers sick of her criticism

Dems tell Pelosi to 'take a seat' with lawmakers sick of her criticism

• 'She needs to take a seat,' a Democratic lawmaker said
• 'She needs to understand what her new role is,' another said
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Nancy Pelosi is under fire from her own Democratic lawmakers, who are annoyed with her public complaints about what the party did wrong in the election that resulted in their loss of the White House, Senate and House of Representatives.

Several Democratic lawmakers complained anonymously to Axiosabout the former speaker.

'She needs to take a seat,' said one senior Democrat. 'Making scattershot comments is not just unhelpful, it's damaging.'

Other Democrats think she needs to step back and let Hakeem Jeffries, the House Democratic leader, lead.

'Hakeem has been tremendously graceful and respectful of her, but I don't think she is being respectful of him,' said a member of the Congressional Black Caucus.

Pelosi lead House Democrats for decade with an iron fist, using her fundraising prowess and vote-counting ability to keep her members in line.

She voluntarily agreed not to run again for party leader again in January 2023 and backed Jeffries, a Democrat from New York, to replace her. She was awarded the title speaker emerita.

Some lawmakers think the 84-year-old is having trouble letting go of her previous power. She elected to stay in Congress as a regular lawmaker instead of fully retiring.

'I understand that this is a difficult transition for her, not being the leader, but she is not,' the member of the Congressional Black Caucus told Axios.

'She needs to understand what her new role is.'

Democrats are frustrated by a post-election interview Pelosi gave to The New York Times where she said it would have been better for the Democratic Party if President Joe Biden had abandoned his re-election campaign sooner and the party had then held a competitive primary process to replace him.

The same Democrats cheered Pelosi on in July when she used her considerable weight in the party to push Biden out as the nominee after his disastrous debate with Donald Trump.

But Pelosi told the Times she believed it was understood that Biden's exit would be followed by an internal party competition for a new nominee, instead of an anointment of Vice President Kamala Harris.

'Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,' Pelosi said. 'The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary.'

Pelosi had, in the first 24 hours after Biden's exit, hinted that the party would have an open primary.

But Biden's support of Harris – along with other prominent Democrats lining up behind her – cut off the possibility of any challenger. Plus Harris was the only candidate who could legally use Biden's campaign war chest.

'Kamala may have, I think she would have done well in that and been stronger going forward. But we don't know that. That didn't happen. We live with what happened. And because the president endorsed Kamala Harris immediately, that really made it almost impossible to have a primary at that time. If it had been much earlier, it would have been different,' she added.

Harris lost in a landslide to Trump. The former president won 312 electoral voters to her 226, he took all seven battleground states, and won the popular vote by 3 million votes.

Republicans also took back control of the Senate and retained control of the House.

Pelosi was at Howard University when Harris conceded her loss. But she and Biden have yet to speak since she urged him out of the race.

Pelosi also suggested that cultural issues were more to blame for Democrats' losses than the loss of the working class.

'Guns, God and gays — that's the way they say it,' she said. 'Guns, that's an issue; gays, that's an issue, and now they're making the trans issue such an important issue in their priorities; and in certain communities, what they call God, what we call a woman's right to choose.'

As DailyMail.com exclusively reported in August, Biden exited the race at the end of July after Pelosi sent an urgent message to him: She was prepared to go public with her concerns that he could not defeat Donald Trump in November.

The ultimatum was clear: Drop out now – or Pelosi would trash her political ally, and friend of over 50 years, on the global stage.

Biden stepped down.

Pelosi later said her big concern was that Democrats beat Trump in November.

'Now I was really asking for a better campaign. We did not have a campaign that was on the path to victory. Members knew that in their districts,' she said August.

'My goal in life was that that man would never set foot in the White House again,' she said of Trump.