Analysis: Could Nancy Pelosi get the boot?

If she were wise, she’d get out now. But power for someone who can’t admit mistakes or take blame is a powerful aphrodisiac.

By Monica Showalter, American Thinker

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been looking miserable lately, and for good reason.

In what should theoreticaly be her season of jubilation, supposedly ousting President Trump, she may well be looking at her own ouster, too.

The House election results are still rolling in, and all are bearing bad news for her supposed House majority.

According to RealClearPolitics, the score stands at 221 House Democrats, and opposition 209 Republicans. Democrats have (so far) lost 9 seats and unseated no Republicans. Republicans, meanwhile, have gained 8. Apparently Joe Biden had absolutely no coattails, which is weird stuff in a presidential election, unless maybe something funny was going on.

Five races have yet to be tallied, two in California, one in Iowa, one in New York and one in New Jersey. All show the Republican, so far, ahead, or else unexpectedly close and in the running to overtake. California’s 21st district, won by ballot harvestors in 2018 by Democrat T.J. Cox, now shows Republican David Valadao, an authentic farmer who held the seat earlier, ahead by 50.6% to Cox’s 49.4, with now 99% of the ballots counted, presumably even from Kern County, which encompasses Bakersfield, where leftists were supposedly abundant. Yeah, it could flip. But it might not.

Same deal in California’s 25th, where Republican Mike Garcia leads Democrat Kristy Smith by 104 votes, a technical tie with 99% of the vote in, and a few hundred more to be counted. The district encompasses places like Simi Valley, home of the Reagan Library, parts of Ventura County and Santa Clarita, which are prosperous places with adjacent right-wing back boonies, and far from solidly blue places.

In Iowa, it’s another 50-50 squeaker in its 2nd district with 99% of the count in. Republican Mariannette Miller-Meeks leads Democrat Rita Hart by 47 votes and they’re going to a recount, but thus far don’t see any changes, according to the Des Moines Register. And Iowa doesn’t have a reputation for dirty filthy corrupt Democrat politics the way many of its Midwest rival states do.

In New Jersey’s District 7, Democrat Tom Malinowski looked to have it in the bag, but Republican Tom Kean, Jr. keeps shrinking his margin further and further, and the Democrat’s lead now stands at around 4,300 votes with less than a 1% margin between them, and 97% counted, according to local NJ.com. With 3% of the votes to be counted, that could change, and even the New York Times has withdrawn its hasty projection in Malinowski’s favor.

In New York’s District 22, which includes upstate cities such as Utica, Republican Claudia Tenney is ahead by a narrow, but not scarily narrow, margin to Democrat Rep. Anthony Brindisi, with about 16,720 votes in her favor. Local Syracuse.com says that Brindisi needs to win about 80% of the remaining ballots to win. RealClearPolitics says 83% of the ballots have been counted.

On Fox News Sunday night, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said he expected a 12-seat pickup. If he’s right, the GOP pickup tally would be 12 and the Democrat losses would be 11, making the seat count Democrats 218, and Republicans 212. But if all goes very well, and the GOP walks off with all five, it could be a 14-seat pickup, not the current 8 for the GOP, which would leave the Democrats with a 13-seat loss.

If the crazy-good happens, then the lineup would be Democrats 216, Republicans 214, which would be a heck of a narrow majority. Pelosi would need to have all Democrats voting with her in lockstep with almost no exceptions in order to get anything done for supposed President Joe.

And the more immediate concern is her survival, she may well get the boot from Democrats. The scenario now is that as the House goes in to vote for Speaker, Republicans could team up with the remaining remnant of moderate Democrats and vote for a more sane and moderate Democrat speaker.

The other scenario is that Pelosi, who controls many purse-strings for Democrats, manages to hold her threadbare party together — and will have to give in to at least some of the rabid leftwing demands of the Democrats’ “squad,” which of course will alienate the moderates.

Either way, it looks like the momentum is against her, as giving in to too many Squad demands will only make the grand-coalition of Republicans and Democrats more likely.

Which is paradoxical, given that Democrats who lost their seats were typically moderates, and recently elected incumbents from 2018, taken down by the Democrats’ ‘defund the police’ and ‘socialism’ cry. That, according to Virginia moderate Democrat Rep. Abigail Spanberger, had to say about it in her embittered post-election call. Now they’re in a catbird seat of sorts.

That’s because Pelosi will be in a heckuva situation to hold onto her speakership. The loss of the suburban Democrats leaves Pelosi with an enhanced rabid-left squad by default and she will have to make a deal with them to keep them happy, yet she also has a weak moderate contingent that might join the Republicans, and the two groups could oust her in favor of someone more palatable.

No wonder Pelosi is coming out with defensive-sounding back-to-the-wall statements such as this reported by Fox News:

“House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, meanwhile, wasn’t ready to take any blame.

“‘I accept credit for winning the majority and holding the House,’ Pelosi told reporters during a Capitol Hill news conference Friday.”

It’s a joke. She’s looking at the weakest majority in decades with a typically building wave in favor of House Republicans that will crest in 2022 with full GOP control of the House.

If she were wise, she’d get out now. But power for someone who can’t admit mistakes or take blame is a powerful aphrodisiac. She’ll instead go out as wadded up discarded garbage then, a sorry remnant of a miserable Congress with nothing to show for itself.

2020 U.S. electionsDemocratic partyNancy PelosiUS CongressUS politics