So they’re hitting her hard in the 2018 congressional midterms—painting the House Democratic leader as a “San Francisco liberal” and lashing Democratic candidates to her mast—because it worked so well in 2010 (when they spent at least $65 million on anti-Pelosi ads and won the House) and again in 2014 (when they augmented their House majority). Pelosi was featured in roughly one-third of all GOP broadcast ads in the first quarter of 2018, devoting a great deal of attention to a politician with little power.

It’s not clear, however, that the formula will work again in 2018. Midterms are typically a referendum on the president, and the current one has politically damaged himself by siding with the Russians who cyber-invaded the American electoral process. But Republicans need an enemy and Pelosi is the best they have. Especially now, when grassroots GOP voters say she’s worse than Kim Jong Un.

Democratic voters aren’t wild about Pelosi either; in a new Gallup poll, only 55 percent rated her favorably, her lowest score in nearly a decade, which is perhaps a response to the fact that Democrats have lost 39 House seats since she took the speaker’s gavel in 2007, and that during the last Congress she presided over the smallest Democratic caucus since 1929.* And what’s noteworthy at the moment is the mini-rebellion among the 2018 candidates. Roughly two dozen Democrats—most of whom are running in red districts that the party believes it can flip—have publicly distanced themselves from Pelosi with all deliberate speed, seeking shelter in advance of an anticipated Republican storm. (One Democratic operative in Washington, D.C., told me privately that he suspects the actual number of dissidents is higher.)

Most of these red-district candidates are decorously signaling their independence, but you don’t need a decoder ring to get the message. Elissa Slotkin in Michigan’s Eighth District says that “on both sides of the aisle, people are seeking new leadership.” Dan McCready in North Carolina’s Ninth District says, “I think we need a whole new generation of people in D.C.” Jeff Van Drew in New Jersey’s Second District says, “It very well could be that we look at new Democratic leadership.” And a few have dispensed with euphemisms—most notably, Richard Ojeda of West Virginia’s Third District, who says that “Nancy Pelosi is an absolute train wreck,” which is probably what a Democratic candidate needs to say in Donald Trump–loving West Virginia.

And dissident Democratic incumbents are still speaking out. Representative Tim Ryan of Ohio, who unsuccessfully sought to oust Pelosi after the 2016 debacle (he garnered one-third of the caucus votes), says he won’t support Pelosi for the speakership in the wake of a blue wave. His district is heavily working class; what he believes now is what he believed in November 2016, when he said: “We need a leader who can go into [heartland] congressional districts and be able to pull Trump voters back. [They] gave us the middle finger. They want us to change … If you’re a coach and your team doesn’t win, at some point you’ve got to change the coach.”