I know it’s a stretch to link these two political players who couldn’t be less alike, but I couldn’t resist the temptation. The status of Nancy Pelosi and Lauren Boebert tells us a lot about where we are in 2022 and where we are headed in the near future.
First, we have Boebert, displaying uncharacteristic faith in the Democratic system, expressing confidence Thursday that once the automatic recount is held in Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District, his several-hundred-vote lead over the surprising Democratic challenger Adam Frisch.
But on Friday, before the count could begin, Frisch called Boebert, then told reporters in a Zoom conference that he had conceded the race. He said he didn’t want people wasting his money on a recount campaign that was unlikely to change the outcome.
We can assume that Boebert would have done the same if the numbers had been reversed. Okay, maybe not.
Despite what you may have heard in 2020, the counts rarely change more than a few votes. And as far as I can tell, Boebert, an election denier, has not claimed that his much closer-than-expected race was rigged or rigged by Democrats or, as Donald Trump briefly suggested, by the Chinese. Are the Republicans finally learning that the Big Lie is turning into an even bigger Big Joke?
It seems Attorney General Merrick Garland has noticed. As I write, Garland is reportedly set to announce that he will appoint special counsel to investigate Trump’s role in the events leading up to the January 6 storming of the Capitol and, of course, Trump’s blatant mishandling of the top-secret government. documents.
When Trump announced last week that he would run for president, many, including me, assumed he did so in hopes of discouraging all the prosecutors currently investigating him. Apparently, Trump’s announcement had the opposite effect on Garland.
Like Trump, Boebert has not blamed herself for anything, nor has she admitted that her loud, provocative, bigoted, undemocratic, Christian nationalist, attention-seeking, Biden-booing, Twitter-trolling, and shaming first term to Colorado in Congress was in no way responsible for his close call.
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Instead, Boebert blamed the Colorado Republicans who failed at the top of the ticket, namely Heidi Ganahl and Joe O’Dea, for nearly unseating her. The top half of the ticket failed, but both candidates were underdogs, and Boebert’s seat, meanwhile, was rated by all the national political gurus as solidly Republican.
She didn’t come close to losing due to another Colorado blue surge. She nearly lost to an unlikely campaign by a relative unknown because to be Lauren Boebert is to be Lauren Boebert, the face of Republican politics in Colorado, and that’s enough to make anyone but a die-hard Trumpist uneasy.
So if you want to start laying out the odds for 2024, let’s say surprised Democrats will pay a little more attention to Boebert and possibly Frisch, who ran as a moderate Democrat concerned about rural issues. No one would be surprised if Frisch, who competed against Boebert’s “anger entertainment,” shows up again in 2024. By then, it might be easier. Frisch will be no stranger, and Boebert will almost certainly have played his part in two years of House dysfunction and revenge-filled investigations that, in most cases, lead nowhere.
What she will not do, you can be sure, is play any role in the royal government.
My guess is that by 2024, after Trump has won or lost a tough primary battle, possibly while under impeachment, Boebert, a reputable member of the far-right House Freedom Caucus, will spend even more time in the headlines. I mean, she already called for the impeachment of Joe Biden. If the House actually voted on him, imagine Boebert on cable news trying to make the case.
Look, if the Freedom Caucus and many other Republicans want to investigate Hunter Biden, do so. If they want to investigate Tony Fauci, well, that may backfire on Republicans whose own record on COVID is disastrous to say the least. If they want to investigate, as Marjorie Taylor Greene insists, the conditions under which insurgents jailed on January 6 have been held, Democrats will be quietly applauding. They can’t wait to be thrown into that field of brambles.
Impeach Biden? I hope I’m not being naive here, but I doubt a slim Republican majority would get that far.
And if you want to investigate Nancy Pelosi, well, let’s go to Nancy Pelosi, the anti-Boebert, the anti-Jordan, the anti-Gohmert, the anti-Gaetz, the anti-Greene, the anti-crazy, the long-time storied. weather. Leader of the House Democrats. There is talk of investigating Pelosi for the fact that the Capitol was not adequately defended on January 6. It would be almost funny if there wasn’t a video of Pelosi desperately trying to call for backup while Trump watched the insurrection on TV and did nothing.
As you know, Pelosi, the only woman to ever serve as Speaker of the House, announced that at age 82 she will not be running to remain Democratic leader. The rest of her senior octogenarian team also resigned from her leadership positions. Of course, she was praised by Democrats, while most House Republicans, to no one’s surprise, didn’t bother to attend.
When Pelosi announced her resignation, it was not a farewell speech. And typically for Pelosi, she wasn’t sentimental, though she veered that way when she mentioned the hammer attack on her husband, Paul. What she did was reference the role of women in Congress, a role that she has come to embody.
Dressed in white, the color of suffragettes, Pelosi said: “When I came to Congress in 1987, there were 12 Democratic women. Now there are more than 90. And we want more”.
The timing was perfect. Although the Republicans regained control of the House, they were predicted to win in a red wave that somehow failed to materialize. And let’s see how well Kevin McCarthy, who is expected to be the next Speaker, fare with a slim majority. The over-under is that he will be lucky to last a year.
Pelosi vowed four years ago to resign after two terms to quell a revolt among some Democrats. She’s not leaving the House. She will be hanging around helping transition the long-awaited new House Democratic leader, Hakeem Jeffries, who would be the first black person to lead a major party.
Routinely reviled and demonized as a San Francisco radical and much worse — she represents San Francisco and is liberal, but largely a pragmatist, as House progressives often lament — Pelosi resigns after a mostly successful battle for four years. with Trump and after mustering a slim majority of her in the House to help pass much of Biden’s often watered-down legislation.
In other words, even when Pelosi loses, she wins. And while she won her race to remain one of the 90-plus women in Congress, it seems like Boebert would be very lucky to win again.
Mike Littwin has been a columnist for too many years to count. He has covered Dr. J, four presidential inaugurations, six national conventions, and countless brain-numbing speeches in the snow of New Hampshire and Iowa..
