Nancy Pelosi...if only you were joking

Okay, is it just me, or is this really scary?

Apparently, newly returned House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi was on Face The Nation the other day. And, also apparently, she indicated that she saw no reason for the Democratic Party to do anything differently. She is quoted, at least in the transcript, as saying, “Well, I don’t think that people want a new direction.”

In a word, whoa.

We are sitting here after one of the greatest defeats in our history as a party and a movement, with an out-and-out fascist about to take over the government, with a solidly red House and Senate, with a Supreme Court that is certain to be packed with hyperconservative fanatics...and she doesn’t feel some sense of urgency? Some sense of a need for change?

And, about those people who “don’t want a new direction.” She says this after millions of voters supported Bernie Sanders. Voters who are still fuming about what they saw as a rigged primary? She doesn’t include such people in her calculations? She chooses to ignore them? So, she saying, in other words, that those “people who don’t want a new direction,” are the people she knows, and who therefore matter.  The rest of us...we don’t.

I am at a loss to explain this remarkable, almost chilling quote of hers. But a friend of mine, Rick, may have come up with the proper interpretation of her position. I posted an article about Pelosi’s quote to Facebook with the despairing comment, “Oh, F*cking H*ll.” And Rick replied with something sage. He quoted Harry Reid, a man of considerable wisdom, and then noted that Pelosi, and the scores of DNC mandarins like her, have no particular reason to want change...or to see or hear those who do.

After all, Rick went on, they... Pelosi and her tribe...will not lose their jobs. They will not lose their health care. They will be warm in winter and air conditioned in summer. They will remain members of the American power elite. Even under Trump.

And so, he concluded, they really don’t have much motivation to do anything different. Or even, particularly, to oppose Trump.

Is my friend right? Well, it would explain a lot, wouldn’t it?

Which is a terrifying thing, indeed.