15 November 2018 — 1716 mst

Pelosi’s last hurrah

The time to pass the torch is when one still can — unless you’re a geriatric Democrat in the U.S. House of Representatives; unless you’re Nancy Pelosi (78), Steny Hoyer (79), or Jim Clyburn (78). These three plan to hold the torch until they’re dead, and after they die, they apparently plan to have their corpses lashed to their seats in Congress and their torches taped to their dead hands.

There’s no doubt that Pelosi’s in trouble. She’s making ridiculous arguments for serving another term as Speaker of the House, among them the notion that since a lot of women voted for Democrats, and were elected to Congress as Democrats, it would be an insult to women to replace her with a man. She’s getting support for that gender identity nonsense from the aging supporters of Hillary Clinton, who ran for President, and lost the election, on a platform of gender identity.

At Mother Jones, Kevin Drum writes that Pelosi likely will be elected Speaker, but with the tacit understanding that she’ll step down after the 2020 election. I agree the odds favor her being elected Speaker again, but I suspect she’ll never step down willingly. Like Dianne Finestein in the Senate, Pelosi (and Hoyer and Clyburn), intends to hold power until she’s dead, and then to rule from the grave. She’ll never be old enough to know better.