Lisa Desjardins:
Quite a lot.
Let's look at who the current House Democratic leadership is, the top three leaders. Let's take a picture, look at the picture of these three leaders. There you go, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and then, of course, Majority Leader right now Steny Hoyer, and then Majority Whip — there we go — Clyburn right there.
So these three leaders, let's talk about when they entered Congress, if you look at this by the numbers, two of them elected in the '80s during the Reagan era — that's Pelosi and Hoyer — and then Clyburn in — just as President Clinton was coming into office.
Now, let's look at who is poised to succeed them. These are not just the next generation, but actually skipping two generations. There you go, Hakeem Jeffries in the middle, Katherine Clark to be the number two, and Peter Aguilar there to be the number three in the Democratic Caucus.
And it should be noted that this was a difficult choice, especially for Steny Hoyer of Maryland, who is the number two. He has wanted to be speaker for such a long time. He is stepping down from leadership, but, like Pelosi, remaining in the House.
Now, Clyburn is remaining in leadership, but in a slightly lower position. So you're going to have those three sort of senior members of the Democratic Caucus still in Congress, but they will be advising these leaders, who are untested, these three. Better for them to be in the minority probably as untested than otherwise.
I also want to say it's important for the Democrats that Hoyer and Pelosi have, frankly, had a lot of tension between the two of them. And for Democrats I talked to you today, they say they feel like this team is actually more united and is going to be easy to get through.
One last question, how unusual is it for a speaker to stay in the House and as a member? Well, let's look at this. Denny Hastert — I'm sorry — Dennis Hastert in 2007, he did this for 11 months. And then, our great team, let's go back to 1790, the first speaker of the House, of course, Frederick Muhlenberg, he actually stepped down as speaker and stayed for two years and went back and forth in leadership.
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