WHEN YOU STRIKE AT A QUEEN… Dems push back against anti-Pelosi insurgents.

The insurgent Democrats, led by Reps. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.) and Kathleen Rice (D-N.Y.), contend that the liberal Pelosi, after four straight losing election cycles, projects the wrong image for the party and should step aside — or be forced out — to allow a new generation of leaders to take the helm.

Moulton is stressing the urgency of a leadership change, arguing that the Democrats can’t win back the majority with Pelosi as the leader, so why wait for the next losing cycle to make the switch?

“There is clearly a desire to have this discussion and to do something — and to do something now,” Moulton told The Hill last week as Congress was preparing to leave town for the July Fourth recess.

“Another reporter recently suggested that people think we should wait until after 2018. I have not heard that from anybody — absolutely not,” Moulton added. “Some people may say that on the record, you know, for political purposes. But we want to win 2018.”

Moulton, 38, who had huddled before the recess with Rice and roughly a dozen other dissenting Democrats, said those “conversations” would continue over the break and beyond.

“We don’t want to wait until after we lose again to make the changes we know we need to make,” he said.

But a growing number of Democrats, representing a crosscut of regions and ideologies, say blaming Pelosi for the Democrats’ losses is misguided because any leader the Democrats seat will instantly become the target of similar GOP attack ads.

You mean, like the anti-Pelosi ads which were successfully used to defend Georgia’s sixth district last month?