OPINION:
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi warned her fellow Democrats that they can’t impeach — that the only way to win the White House in 2020 is with a margin of victory so “big” that President Donald Trump can’t challenge the results in court.
She is worried. Rightly so.
Democrats have been hanging out in Looneyville for so long they’ve forgotten how to properly politic. And by that, it’s meant: Everybody knows moderation is crucial on the campaign trail.
Everybody, including Pelosi.
“Own the center left, own the mainstream,” Pelosi said in an interview with The New York Times about upcoming elections. “Our passions were for health care, bigger paychecks, cleaner government — a simple message.”
Key word, “were.”
Where is that party of Pelosi’s imaginations?
First off, it’s Pelosi herself who ushered in the more radical elements of the Democratic Party with her hail-to-the-socialist-Obamacare, “we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it” approach to governing. If former President Barack Obama was the titan of modern ramrod governance — the executive order-in-chief, so to speak — Pelosi was certainly his second-in-command. Remember her role?
“How Nancy Pelosi kept Democrats united behind Obamacare,” The Washington Post reported in 2017.
Right.
So it’s a bit disingenuous for Pelosi, now, to call for cooler heads, to calm her party mates and try and wean them, at least for the time being, off the likes of impeachment and “Medicare for All.”
But setting aside her own hypocrisy for the moment, the second question here is this: Who’s left in the Democratic Party who could be considered moderate? By any stretch of the word’s definition?
This batch of campaigning Democrats are calling for reparations; they’re calling for massive environmental regulations and a gutting of the Second Amendment; they’re calling for free — i.e., tax paid — college tuition. They’re making media waves by saying the world has only 12 years left to survive — nope, oops, make that 10. They’re doing dumb things like saying the Boston Marathon bomber should get a vote.
Pelosi, no political newbie, is feeling the winds and shaking her head in practice defeat. She’s taking preemptive steps to excuse what she senses as her party’s looming losses by offering up an early strategy to fight Trump’s second-term win.
“In recent weeks,” The New York Times wrote, “Pelosi has told associates that she does not automatically trust the president to respect the results of any election short of an overwhelming defeat.”
She’s laying the groundwork for battle, making a slyly subtle case for “in case.”
It’s a bit of a hoot. The Pelosi who’s to blame for ringing in the radical — for bringing to America the same population control that’s favored by communists, called nationalized health care — is now feeling the burn from her overly radicalized base.
She’s worried about upcoming elections. She’s right. Today’s Democrats, for Republicans, are going to be in 2020 the greatest ballot box gift.
Nobody knows that better than the queen of the radicalized Democratic Party herself, Speaker Pelosi.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley.
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