Nancy Pelosi’s comments to the LA Times might be simply a way of delimiting the GOP’s usual misogynist fear-mongering as election day approaches.
However, it is important to note that whenever impeachment hearings begin, there’s going to be a unified party in 2020 to take on the GOP and Agent Orange.
There will be party evolution, regardless, as the weight of Trumpian stupidity will make the GOP implode and perhaps even the nation’s deplorables will see how the GOP is looting the treasury.
Unlike Jeff Flake’s emo-posturing toward his Senate retirement, Democrats actually care about party unity, and, if Adam Schiff becomes Speaker, GOP asses in both houses will be kicked even more than before. It will amuse us all when Trump starts claiming in his lie-fests that Maxine Waters will be the next Speaker.
Short-term lease: In interview, Nancy Pelosi says she she's herself as "transitional figure" if Democrats win back House and make her speaker again. “I have things to do. Books to write, places to go...:
By implicitly limiting her time as speaker, Pelosi could ease the pressure to stand aside by signaling her willingness for a new and younger generation of leaders to take over sooner rather than later.
Pelosi has quietly been grooming potential successors, among them Rep. Adam Schiff of Burbank, and though she said she would be delighted to hand the speaker’s gavel to another woman — “Oh, yeah!” she exclaimed — she has no plans to try to force a choice.
“Whoever is next is not up to me,” she said. “If I were saying, ‘I want so-and-so to be my successor,’ that’s not right.”
Both lawmakers are assuming the role of speaker-in-waiting as candidates nationwide battle for the House majority, moving aggressively to consolidate power and plot their first steps if their party wins control in next month’s midterm elections.
The two Californians are not only raising millions of dollars and campaigning for candidates as they work to claim Congress’s ultimate gavel next year. They are also quietly working to overcome internal challenges amid an uncertain political landscape that will not be settled until Election Day — or weeks afterward if key races remain unresolved.
For Pelosi, extending a 16-year stretch as the top House Democratic leader — and retaking the speaker’s gavel after eight years in the minority — would mean underscoring her groundbreaking status as the first female speaker and casting herself as the lone woman in Washington leadership ready to battle Trump.
“You can’t let the opposite party choose the leader of your party,” Pelosi said at a Harvard University event this week, dismissing the relentless GOP attacks on her that have prompted dozens of Democrats to keep their distance.
“And I say it especially to women, because they think women are going to run away from a fight,” she said, suggesting the criticism smacks of sexism. “But you can’t do that,” she added. “You believe in what you have to offer. Know your power.”
More quietly, she has met or spoken privately with nearly every Democratic primary winner over the past months — heartland moderates and left-wing insurgents alike. She huddled in late July in San Francisco with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the hard-left candidate who unseated Rep. Joseph Crowley (D-N.Y.), the No. 4 Democratic leader and a Pelosi ally, in a June primary.
Since then, she has campaigned with Democratic candidates from California to Minnesota to Florida and left no doubt that she intends to remain as the top party leader.
“That sends a message of strength. That sends a message of unity. That sends a message that we have to get this thing done,” said Nadeam Elshami, a former top aide to Pelosi. “That’s one. But, two, never underestimate what two, three, four, five steps [ahead] she has in her head.”