Is Nancy Pelosi Predicting Failure to Capture the House?
Dafydd ab Hugh
I was struck by several lines in a Drudge-linked election interview with Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco, 100%) on the SFGate website (carried on the front page of the print version, I believe). There are so many wonderful examples right here of everything we've been saying about the Lady from Baghdad by the Bay; but there is one thing so divisive, so loathsome, that it dwarfs every other infelicity she utters.
But I'll get to that last. Let's have some fun, first.
Most folks seem to be focusing on this particularly rational, ladylike outburst from the moderate representative from San Franciso:
"We're going to take back the country for the American people -- Democrats and Republicans alike -- because it has been held hostage by the radical right wing of the Republican Party," Pelosi said.
"This is a freak show, and it has to come to an end," Pelosi said. "This is about a Congress and White House whose purpose is to concentrate wealth into the top 1 percent of our country at the expense of the middle class."
Leave aside her direct steal of "held hostage" from Rush Limbaugh... who of course meant it as a joke, while Nancy Pelosi is deadly serious; the idea that anyone who represents San Francisco, of all places, calling any other group of people a "freak show" is hilarious ("high-larious," if you're George Will). ...
... Or this:
"It just goes to show you, though, how bankrupt the Republicans are of ideas," Pelosi said. "This election is about the president of the United States; it's not about me. But it's interesting they've made the president of the United States the political hit man, and now he's making personal attacks, not only on me, but on the city I proudly represent."
Mrs. Pelosi... the president of the United States is not up for election. You are. If the Democrats win, you will (maybe) become the Squeaker of the House... not president. The election is all about you! ...
... But frivolity must end; now is the time to sober up. I found these earlier lines much more chilling:
"I know where the numbers are in these races, and I know that they are there for the 15; today (it's) 22 to 26," Pelosi said Friday. [On a completely unrelated side issue, Mort Kondracke now predicts 4 to 8 more Democratic pickups in the House than even Nancy Pelosi fantasizes!]
Pelosi cautioned that the number of Democratic House victories could be higher or lower and said her greatest concern is over the integrity of the count -- from the reliability of electronic voting machines to her worries that Republicans will try to manipulate the outcome.
"That is the only variable in this," Pelosi said. "Will we have an honest count?''
This is not the way a confident person speaks. A leader who really believes she's headed for the big office does not start laying the ground work for the López Obrador Gambit.
