It's remarkable what a major loss for the Democratic Party has done to stimulate the growth of House members' cojones.

Not only did a number of Democratic House members run away from Nancy Pelosi during the run up to the recent general election, now even more have been encouraged by the results to pile on the about-to-be-erstwhile Speaker.

My representative is among those pumping fresh testosterone.

After voting for her twice and wearing a path to her Speaker's desk for four years, Rep. Tim Holden (D, PA-17) has thrown Nancy Pelosi under the bus. The woman who approved all of his congressional earmarks over that period has outlived her usefulness to the congressman. Blaming her for his party's losses in the general election, Holden wants Nancy to step down from her leadership post.

Holden says he warned Pelosi four years ago not to pursue radical policies.

Uh, Mr. Holden, Ms. Pelosi began pursuing radical policies on Day 1 of the first session of the 110^th Congress, immediately after you voted to make her Speaker.

Holden voted with Mrs. Pelosi more than 96% of the time in her first term,, and didn't object enough to her policies for the entire first  two years to prevent him from voting to make her Speaker a second time.

In addition to voting for quite a few before and thereafter, Holden voted for one of Pelosi's most radical policies, the massive, wasteful, failed stimulus bill, on Day 9 of the 111^th Congress. In the past two years Holden has voted with the Speaker more than 95% of the time on all of her radical schemes except cap and trade and health care. That was enough to get him re-elected. 

For the four years of the Democratic majority in the House, Tim Holden voted with Speaker Pelosi more than nineteen out of twenty times while self-identifying as a "Blue Dog" conservative Democrat. Ironically, Holden's voting record with Pelosi actually exceeded the Democratic Caucus average of a bit over 92%. Perhaps Mr. Holden would like to explain how a "conservative" member's party unity voting record could raise rather than lower the Democratic Caucus average in arguably the most liberal Congress in American history.

For context, in the 111^th Congress to date, Dennis Kucinich, (D-UFO) voted with Mrs. Pelosi 91.5% of the time. Kucinich, no one's conservative, actually brought down the caucus average while Mr. Holden was raising it.