WASHINGTON — Democrats need a new plan, U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Salem) said today, in the wake of two House special-election defeats – and that plan may not include keeping Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi at the helm.

"It's time for change, and personally I think it's time for a new generation of leadership in the party," Moulton told reporters on Capitol Hill today, stopping short of explicitly calling for Pelosi's ouster.

Moulton's comments came hours after Republican Karen Handel narrowly won the country's most expensive congressional battle in history: a highly competitive battle for Georgia's 6th District, where Republicans ran ads linking Democratic candidate Jon Ossoff to Pelosi.

Moulton criticized Democrats' handling of that race as well as the South Carolina 5th District contest, where Democrat Archie Parnell lost to Republican Ralph Norman by an even narrower margin. Democrats had spent only $250,000 in South Carolina compared to more than $30 million spent to back Ossoff in Georgia.

"One thing I learned in the Marines is that you are responsible for everything you do or fail to do," Moulton said. "So I think our leadership owes an explanation of what happened, how resources were spent, but also a plan going forward."

Whether Pelosi keeps her leadership position, Moulton said, has "got to be part of the discussion."

"We as Democrats have to come to terms with the fact that we lost again," he said. "We are the party that stands up for working families, for the middle class, and yet many of them are not voting for us."

In last year's leadership race, Moulton backed Pelosi's challenger, Rep. Tim Ryan of Ohio.

Moulton, a 38-year-old Harvard grad who served four tours in Iraq as a Marine Corps infantry officer, has attracted national headlines in the past year for his stances on national security and gun safety issues, and is frequently named by analysts as a potential contender in the 2020 presidential race.

Moulton today spoke alongside other Democratic lawmakers and former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who urged President Trump to present a National Security Strategy to Congress, a document required by statute to be submitted to lawmakers within 150 days of taking office – a deadline that passed this week.

Moulton, along with other co-chairs of a new House Democratic National Security Task Force, sent a letter to Trump today asking him to produce the document that lays out the administrations's national security priorities.

Albright said the administration's lack of strategic planning is making it more difficult to address myriad national security issues and hampering efforts to work with allies.

"North Korea is unbelievably dangerous and a problem, but if one were doing priorities, so are the things that are going on in the Middle East," Albright told reporters after meeting with Moulton and other task force members. "So part of the issue here, and this is why a National Security Strategy is important, is to get some sense of what are the priorities? … The bottom line is the ad hoc-ness of everything that is going on is the problem. And then it's difficult to explain to our allies, or to mobilize how the defense and state department work together."