Nancy Pelosi Knows What She's Doing

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi knows what she's doing, especially when it comes to Donald Trump. That's just a fact. And anyone who had any doubt need look no further than her decision to write him a letter politely suggesting he not give his State of the Union address while the government is shut down, thus denying him the one thing he craves most — attention.

I've seen a lot of bad arguments against Pelosi's decision, most of them the usual veiled misogyny with no further argument, but the worst of them all is the take in which she is scolded for upending a democratic tradition like the State of the Union out of spite, or because she's drunk with power, or for various other reasons that all share in common the defining feature of manifestly not being her motivation.

There are a couple of problems with this argument, the first and (oughtta be) most obvious being that slightly delaying the State of the Union address is hardly the biggest of our concerns regarding democratic norms at the moment, and any ire regarding deviance from democratic tradition should be directed squarely at the occupant of the White House and his democracy-destroying minions.

Secondly, this shit isn't happening in a vacuum. It's not like Trump was going to deliver some beautiful, thoughtful, important address waxing contemplative about the year behind us and laying out detailed policy proposals for the year to come. He was going to spend an hour, give or take, disgorging rambling shards of belligerent bigotry, elaborately lying, sniffing, and sucking his teeth.

None of us need to hear a single fucking thing he was going to say. No one knows that any better than Nancy Pelosi.

So good for her for using whatever methods she's got to stop him from saying any of it, for as long as possible.