It’s too early to proclaim this the year of the women at the polls, but it’s most certainly the year of the Democratic women candidates.
According to the Cook Political Report, 65 House primary elections have been held thus far that have featured at least one Democratic woman candidate, and women have won 45 of them, with two more races, in which a woman is considered the favorite, headed to a run-off. In these 65 elections, women were 39 percent of the candidates, yet won 54 percent of the votes.
All this throws into an even more dubious light the stated reluctance of some Democratic candidates and members of Congress to re-elect Nancy Pelosi as their party's leader in the House. In a year when Democratic voters are tilting heavily toward women standard-bearers, some Democrats want to replace Pelosi with—who, exactly? The most visible anti-Pelosi candidate is Representative Joe Crowley, whose claim, if not to fame, exactly, then a higher level of obscurity, is that he heads the Democratic Party organization of Queens. Another representative in the mix, who's run against Pelosi before for the leader's position, is Ohio's Tim Ryan.
Neither Crowley nor Ryan is notably female.
I'm not arguing that Pelosi should retain her position because she is female. The fact that she's the single-most effective congressional leader, in either party, in the past century—getting just enough House votes to enact the Affordable Care Act, and a unanimous Democratic vote against the GOP tax cut—does suggest, however, that the Democrats likely have nowhere to go but down if they replace her.
Besides—if they retake the House on the strength of the women candidates who've been kicking butt in Democratic primaries, what message would it send to Democratic voters should their congressional caucus bump a supremely accomplished (female) leader for a guy names Joe? Just askin'.