Dr. Maccoby participates in a Weekly Forum on Washington Post.com called "On Leadership". I am compiling all of his responses to the weekly questions here.
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DATE: November 8, 2010 Pelosi: Time to step aside? House Speaker Nancy Pelosi last week confronted a dilemma faced by many leaders: whether to step aside when things go wrong. What should be the criteria guiding such a decision? Did Pelosi make the right choice? Should she have offered to resign but let her caucus make the decision? What about Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid? |
Democrats should stick with Pelosi and Reid
Although the majority of Americans who voted repudiated the Democrats in Congress, viewed through the lens of cultural anthropology, the picture is more complex. Fifty-six percent of young voters (18-29) supported Democrats as did minorities and people living in large cities, while older and rural voters strongly supported Republicans. Viewed another way, states that border the Pacific (California, Oregon, Washington) and the northern Atlantic (Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York) where Democratic senators and governors won seem like different cultures from those of the South and Midwest where Republicans dominated.
As the Democrats lick their wounds and plan their future, it would be a mistake for them to try to regain support from the Independents who put Obama in the White House at the expense of renouncing the policies that gained them support from the Democrat voters. Their constituency now combines people making less than $50,000 who believe they have been helped by Democratic policies with liberal intellectuals and young people who believe that these policies will benefit the country in the future.
The Republican constituency of 2010 combined a majority of people making more than $100,000 with the majority of older voters (those above 60 were 34 percent of voters) and with a middle class that does not believe it has benefited from Democratic policies. From what I hear and read, I conclude that many of these people believe they will suffer because of the Obama policies. This constituency included registered Republicans and a majority of Independents.
Both Obama and Pelosi have been effective leaders for the Democrat constituency. Neither has connected with the Republican constituency. Would other Democrats do better? Should Pelosi be replaced by a Democrat considered more centrist? The danger is that this would alienate the Democrat constituency without either gaining Republican support or responding to the concerns of Independents who supported them in 2008 but abandoned them on November 2.
My advice to the Democrats is to stick with their leadership; but for Obama, Pelosi and Reid to turn their attention to the needs and fears of those voters who once put their hopes in them.
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