Hello and welcome. It is Eric Erickson here. The third hour of the program. You can be a part of it.

877-973-7-4-25 should you like to do so. I want to start with a piece in the New York Times.

The headline is The vanishing moderate Democrat.

It shows a donkey with a unicorn horn.

Their positions are popular, so why are they going extinct?

Early last year, as Democrats were preparing to control the White House and Congress for the first time in a decade, Josh Gothimer, met with Nancy Pelosi to discuss the party's message.

Sitting in the House Speaker's office and the Capitol, he opened up the YouTube app on his iPhone. There was something he wanted to show her.

Gothheimer, who represented a wealthy suburban and ex-urban

House district in northern New Jersey, first elected in 2016. His victory over a seven-term

Republican incumbent in a district Donald Trump nearly defeated Hillary Clinton was one of the

Democrats' few bright spots that year. Since his arrival in Washington, however, Gothheimer

had been the cause of more headaches than celebrations for Pelosi and our leadership team.

As co-chairman of the Problem Solvers Caucus, a group of 29 Democrats and 29 Republicans that chaotically aspires to the goal of bipartisan compromise,

he has frequently found himself at odds with fellow Democrats on everything from foreign policy to Biden's domestic agenda to Pelosi's leadership.

In 2018, Gothheimer and eight other problem solver Democrats threatened to reject Pelosi's bid for Speaker if she didn't concede to their demand for rules changes that would make it easier for bipartisan ideas to be considered.

And angered colleagues who viewed it as yet another instance of Gothheimer and his group engaging in pointless grandstanding rather than constructive behind the scenes work.

Tell me a problem they've solved, Representative Susan

Wilde, a Democrat from Pennsylvania said. Pelosi, however, agreed to their demand and secured their

support. Now she was willing to hear Gothheimer out on how the Democratic majority should position

itself. He pressed play on the iPhone. A waving American flag was an image with a familiar

voice proclaimed, I am honored to have been given the opportunity to stand up for the values

and the interests of ordinary Americans. The video was a campaign ad from Bill Clinton in 1996

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