House Democrats Look for Successor to Pelosi

“During the months following the November 2014 midterm elections, several House Democrats convened a series of secret meetings to plot the future of their party’s leadership,” according to the New York Times Magazine.

“The party had just endured a nationwide thrashing in the midterms and, at every level below the presidency, had little reason to feel all that optimistic about 2016. Retaking the Senate would be at best a 50-50 proposition. Democrats controlled only 18 of the nation’s 50 statehouses and 11 of its state legislatures, and those numbers seemed unlike to improve anytime soon. The prospects going forward were particularly grim in the House, where the number of Democratic members — 188 — was the lowest it had been since the Hoover administration.”