Nearly a third of House Democrats voted against keeping Nancy Pelosi in her job as minority leader on Wednesday, evidence that many in the party blame their leadership for failure to make up much ground on Republicans in November's election, particularly among white working class voters who once made up the backbone of Democratic politics.

Sixty-three Democrats voted Rep. Tim Ryan of Ohio instead of Pelosi, the most to oppose her since she first joined the leadership by beating out Steny Hoyer of Maryland for the job of minority whip in 2001.

After eight years in the White House, during most of which they controlled at least one house in Congress, Democrats are facing exile to the political wilderness. At least in part to blame are blue-collar white voters who swung overwhelmingly for Donald Trump and Republicans over Hillary Clinton and Democrats on Nov. 8.

Pelosi, who has spent 14 years as the top House Democrat, called her victory Wednesday a "strong vote," promising to take up the task of opposing President-elect Trump's administration and to put her party in a position to climb back from their losses.

"Where we can engage, we will. Where we need to oppose, we will," she told reporters after the vote, as elections for other leadership positions continued inside a meeting room at the Capitol. "This does afford an opportunity so that the congressional Democrats can go forward and remove all doubt that never again will we have an election where there's any doubt in anyone's mind where the Democrats are when it comes to America's working families."

With the GOP preparing to take control of the White House and hold both chambers of Congress, Democrats are scrambling to chart a path to a comeback.

They failed to take advantage of a friendly map, falling at least two seats short of the Senate majority – depending on the outcome of Louisiana's runoff next month – and will face even tougher odds in 2018. Meanwhile, most experts believe uncompetitively drawn House districts mean Democrats will languish in the minority in the lower chamber at least until redistricting after 2020.

With Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, a top lieutenant of retiring Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, unanimously elected by Senate Democrats to replace Reid earlier this month, many of party's rank-and-file believe keeping the same leaders in place is the surest path to staying in the minority.

"I am deeply disappointed today, as the House Democratic Caucus has decided to double down on its failed strategy in recent years," Rep. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona said in a statement. "It is obvious our current strategy doesn't work; millions of Americans don't feel that our party represents them any more and they've said so, loudly, in multiple elections. … We owe better to the American people."

Rep. Kurt Schrader of Oregon told reporters after the vote he feared the party, in re-electing Pelosi, had "just signed the Democratic Party's death certificate for the next decade and a half, unless we change and adopt what Tim's been talking about, which is really a working-man and -women's agenda, regardless of who you are."

"So far, we've shown no inclination to do that," Schrader said.

In the weeks since the election, some liberal commentators have suggested Democrats should abandon "identity politics." Their failure this year, the argument goes, was in their excessive focus on Black Lives Matter and so-called "bathroom bills," rather than the kitchen table economics that voters typically say are the most important issues to them.

The debate has dredged up memories of Bill Clinton's "New Democrat" strategy in 1992, when he was able to win back some Democrats who had drifted toward Republicans under Ronald Reagan by focusing on "tough on crime" policies and welfare reform.

While Democrats can still count on minority voters to vote heavily in their favor, turnout among key blocs was down in 2016. And the minor uproar that followed post-election comments made by Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont in response to a young woman who asked how she could become the second Latina elected to the Senate, was illuminating.

"It is not good enough for somebody to say, 'I'm a woman, vote for me.' No, that's not good enough. What we need is a woman who has the guts to stand up to Wall Street, to the insurance companies, to the drug companies, to the fossil fuel industry," he said last week in Boston. "In other words, one of the struggles that you're going to be seeing in the Democratic Party is whether we go beyond identity politics."

His remark spawned op-eds warning that swapping out a focus on racial, gender and religious diversity for a purely class-based argument would fail.

Sanders, who is expected to be a key voice in pushing a progressive strategy, has since clarified that the Democratic Party's commitment to diversity is intrinsic to its success.

"Our job is to expand diversity. We want more women, more African-Americans, more Latinos, and individuals of all ages, colors and creed to be involved in the political process," he wrote. "But to think of diversity purely in racial and gender terms is not sufficient."

"Our rights and economic lives are intertwined," he said. "Now, more than ever, we need a Democratic Party that is committed to fulfilling, not eviscerating, Dr. Martin Luther King's dream of racial, social, and economic justice for all."

On Wednesday, Rep. Eric Swalwell of California said there were lessons to be learned from November's results but that the party's successes were as instructive as its losses.

While he said it was important to go "back to just the basics for us, which is an uplifting message, an economy that works for all of us," much of the blame for Clinton's loss falls to Clinton's rust-belt strategy, in which she skipped over travel to Wisconsin and Michigan in favor of Florida, North Carolina, Arizona and other states.

"You can't not go to Wisconsin," he said.

Swalwell, who will be a co-chairman of the Steering and Policy Committee and the youngest member of the House Democrats' leadership team, pointed to the success in Nevada – a diverse state that exemplifies the "rising American electorate" that was supposed to deliver the election to Clinton.

"Nevada is a bright light in a foggy harbor," he said. "We can learn a lot from that. It's a non-coastal state where we held the Senate, picked up two House seats, and Secretary Clinton won there."

The debate is one that is sure to carry into the new year, as the party prepares to elect a new leader for the Democratic National Committee.

Rep. Keith Ellison, a progressive African-American Muslim from Minnesota, has the backing of Sanders and other progressives who suggest he can speak to many aspects of the Democrats' disparate coalition.