Nancy Pelosi has announced her retirement as of the end of the current term. No surprise there: she is 85 years old, and being in the minority in the House, especially after having been Speaker, is no fun. Conservatives have mostly despised “San Fran Nan,” and president Trump made no bones about his feelings:
“I think she’s an evil woman. I’m glad she’s retiring. I think she did the country a great service by retiring,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office when asked for his reaction to the California Democrat’s announcement she is ending her decades-long storied career.
“I think she was a tremendous liability for the country,” Trump continued. “I thought she was an evil woman who did a poor job who cost the country a lot in damages and in reputation. I thought she was terrible.”
He said worse on Truth Social. Of course, she impeached Trump twice, and said that he is the “worst thing on the face of the earth.” So the feeling is mutual.
I can’t stand Pelosi, either. One remembers when she sat behind Trump during a State of the Union speech, and tore up her copy of the speech on camera. At the same time, at age 85, Pelosi is an old-fashioned Democrat. Her father, Thomas D’Alesandro Jr., was the Mayor of Baltimore. Sadly, it is not true that she was Miss Lube Rack of 1959:
Nevertheless, in an important way, Pelosi was one of the last “normal,” if very liberal, Democrats. For example, Katie Hill, a member of the Democratic caucus from California, turned out to be a swinger. She and her husband signed up for a swingers’ cruise, and they advertised Katie’s availability in a swingers’ magazine under the name “Angelbutt123.” They became entangled in a relationship with a female member of Hill’s staff as a “throuple,” which was too much for Pelosi, especially after explicit photos emerged. She forced Katie Hill to resign from Congress.
Yes, it is a low bar. But would the younger generation of Democrats have any problem with Katie Hill’s “liberated” personal life? I doubt it.
Nancy Pelosi will be replaced, in her San Francisco district, by a worse Democrat. We can expect a San Francisco version of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or Zohran Mamdani to succeed her. Will it matter? Not in the short term, since all Democrats vote alike once they are in Congress. But over time, the leftward drift of the Democratic Party toward socialism/communism is a threat to the republic, and Pelosi’s resignation will accelerate it.
Not that she was much of a bulwark: a few years ago, asked by a reporter to explain the difference between a Democrat and a socialist, she was stumped. Couldn’t come up with a thing.
