Long live the gerontocracy: Nancy Pelosi will seek reelection in 2022.
The House speaker, who turns eighty-two in March, announced her move in a Twitter video.
“While we have made progress much more needs to be done to improve people’s lives,” Pelosi said. “Our democracy is at his because of assaults on the truth, the assault on the US Capitol and the state-by-state assault on voting rights.”
“This election is crucial: nothing less is at stake than our democracy,” the speaker continued. “But as we say: we don’t agonize, we organize! And that is why I am running for re-election to Congress and respectfully seek your support.”
Earlier in the clip, Pelosi thanked her voters for “the privilege to represent our city and our San Francisco values in the Congress,” before rattling through a list of progressive buzzwords. Cockburn couldn’t help but notice she’d missed a chance to answer the questions posed by her constituent Michael Shellenberger in the forthcoming edition of The Spectator World: “What were we getting for our high taxes? Why, after twenty years of voting for ballot initiatives promising to address drug addiction, mental illness and homelessness, had all three gotten worse?”
Pelosi made a pledge in 2018, that she reaffirmed in 2020, that she would step aside from leadership in 2022.
With under ten months to go before the midterms, Cockburn wonders if Pelosi is offering a parting gift to her party: if she is speaker while the Democrats suffer the looming crushing defeat, does she permit them a clean break and an opportunity for a new generation of leaders to reset in time for 2024?
Then again, maybe we should take Pelosi at her word. Perhaps she really does believe that “nothing less is at stake than our democracy” and that the only chance to preserve the American republic lies with her donning her armor and sallying forth to the polls once more.
There’s a third possibility of course: Nancy Pelosi is stubborn. She’s not going to shuffle off and see out her days in a care home just because some hot-headed young whippersnappers want her to. If she thinks the Ruth Bader Ginsburg route is the correct course of action for the party she’s spent decades leading, who is Cockburn to stop her?
