Suppose Pelosi Was Crazy LIke a Fox

Everyone is agreed that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was acting like a prehistoric progressive fossil when she intervened in the good old American coronavirus pork fest to interject a bill larded up with progressive rubbish like mail-in voting and $15 minimum wage and more windmills and diversity, diversity, diversity.

But maybe she was really acting like a sensible philosopher of political contagion.

Think about it: here she is in San Francsico mansion for a well-earned rest, and dealing all week with all manner of lefty activist groups each with their own bauble that they wanted to hang on the coronavirus Christmas tree.

Now think about it. The sensible, practical thing to do would have been to have an aide get on the phone to Schumer's aide and get them to sneak a few goodies into the Senate bill. On the Q.T. That is what an experienced practical politician does.

But she didn't do that. Instead she arrives in DC like Queen S*** and demands that the whole of Washington, DC comes to a screeching halt and introduces a bill that is a caricature of "far-left" fever dreams.

Immediately all hell breaks loose, and guys like me call their senators and representatives demanding that they cut the c*** and act to save the economy. I have to admit that I have never called a congressional office before. Then next morning I called 'em again and left more messages.

So Nancy caves.

But suppose that Nancy Pelosi all along has been trying to deal with her crazies by giving them what they want so that they can see for themselves that pushing the lefty agenda is a quick way to political Jail, do not pass Go. Why, it might even reelect Trump and return the House to the GOP!

Suppose she has been telling each lefty group along that this just is not the hour to push the progressive agenda. Hey, she tells them, wait until the next Democratic president is inaugurated. Then we can push your agenda. But, she says, if you insist I'll go back to DC and get your issue in the bill. But I don't think it will end well.

But what does she do? She piles all the lefty rubbish into a heap and lights a firestorm, and the whole thing goes up in flames.

I ask you. Is Nancy Pelosi really that stupid? I don't think so. I think this was an effort to clear the decks until after the election. Or better still 2024.

I was reading Jonah Goldberg this morning and he had a half-sensible thing to say.

One of my priors is the idea that our political parties are overdue for a major transformation. The coalitions that constitute them are unstable and combustible. The ideas that once bound them together are frayed.

Well, Jonah, I would say that the Republican Party is well on its way to reinvention as the Commoner party, Donald J. Trump, proprietor.

But the Democrats! They are the party of the educated Gentry pretending to be in it for the victims. Only their entire agenda is really just Gentry posturing and moralizing: it all comes down to jobs and status for the Gentry and its fads and enthusiasms. It is all about restoring Meaning to the lives of north Seattle liberals now that the moral posture of driving a Prius has become a little stale.

It's already obvious what the future Republican Party is going to look like.

But the Democrats? Good question! How do you square the moral preening of educated professionals with the needs of immigrants busily working their way up and the descendants of slaves now camping out in decaying cities?

Quite honestly I don't have a clue.

But I have a message for the immigrants and slave descendants. Jobs, jobs, jobs.  You'll find them in the Republican Party's economic agenda. Democrats really don't care about people like you.