Pelosi: House Democrats should skip the national convention

First, the good news, at least for House Democrats.  Instead of running for the lifeboats to escape the debacle unfolding in Charlotte in the next few weeks, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has announced an official “abandon ship“:

House minority leader Nancy Pelosi says that Democratic members should stay home and campaign in their districts rather than go to the party’s national convention in North Carolina.
“I’m not encouraging anyone to go to the convention, having nothing to do with anything except I think they should stay home, campaign in their districts, use their financial and political resources to help them win their election,” Pelosi said in an exclusive interview for POLITICO Live’s On Congress, a new weekly show to be streamed live on POLITICO’s website and broadcast on NewsChannel 8 on Wednesdays. …
“We nominated a president last time. We have an incumbent President of the United States. We’re very proud of him. There certainly will be enough people there to express that pride, but I’m not encouraging members to go to the convention no matter what the situation was, because they can be home. It’s campaign time. It’s the first week in September,” she said.

Maybe the DNC should have scheduled it for mid-August instead, then?  That’s one of the more minor problems with the Democratic convention — after a lack of funding, the outrage of Big Labor for holding it in a right-to-work state, and the use of Bank of America Stadium by a party that spent the last four years demonizing the banking industry, it falls well down the list.  It’s still worth discussing, though; why did Democrats schedule their convention on a week when the pressure to be home campaigning would be strongest?  Apparently it came from a game of chicken played with the GOP to get the last word in conventions, but maybe both parties should rethink the late-season staging of these affairs.

Read more: http://hotair.com/archives/2012/07/18/pelosi-house-democrats-should-skip-the-national-convention/