Nancy Pelosi, Viper Hunter

      I've never been able to figure out why everybody hates Nancy Pelosi so much.

      Among conservatives her name is thrown around as synonymous with evil, and even quite a few Democrats hiss at the sound of her name.  But it's never been clear to me specifically why.
      Last August NBC News posted a list of 35 Democratic House candidates and incumbents who publicly stated that if the Democrats  took back the House they wouldn't vote for Nancy Pelosi for  Speaker of the House even though she's been the leader of the House Democrats for most of this  century. None of the Democratic candidates opposing Pelosi gave any particular reason for their opposition other than a vague pseudo-quotable - apparently agreed upon by the lot of them - about it being  time for a chance in leadership.
        Never mind that Nancy Pelosi is the highest-ranking female law-maker in the history of the United States government and that Barack Obama has called her the best Speaker the House of Representatives has ever had.
      In fact Nancy Pelosi is a strong Progressive who has championed health care, civil liberties, LGBTQ and women's rights, education, and the environment,

...just like Bernie Sanders.  Who, of course, nobody hates. Everybody loves, or at least respects, Bernie Sanders.

      In fact, politically speaking, I  see only two main differences between Bernie Sanders and Nancy Pelosi: (1) Pelosi is a woman, and (2) she gets things done, and it's these two differences that make her the target of the right, whose members have done such a good and thorough job of generating free-floating generic hatred against Nancy Pelosi that the hate has bled across the aisle and  villainizing her has become the norm among much of the American populace. Which is the real reason why jelly-spined Democratic candidates have been slinking away from her. They've been afraid that the toxicity that the right strives to paint her with will rub off on them.
       But that was before.
     The chain of events that has been unwinding since the midterm elections last Tuesday has changed everything.
         Or at least I hope it has.
     Because it's become clear that last week's midterm Democratic victory in the House of Representatives,

...not to mention the "Rainbow Wave" of candidates of color, LGBTQ candidates, Muslim, Native American and minority candidates and women who won their midterm elections,

...has so greatly riled Donald Trump that he has since been behaving like a viper provoked in its nest, rearing up, baring its fangs, and striking.
   

     There  was Donald Trump the day after midterms at his press conference, agitated, bellicose, snapping and snarling at journalists, insulting them, shouting them down, calling them enemies of the people.

    There  was Trump revoking the press pass of  reporter Jim Acosta for daring to press him for answers to hard questions.

     There was his press secretary Sarah Sanders spreading a lie that Jim Acosta  had assaulted a female White House aide, a lie she attempted to substantiate with a doctored video.

      There was Donald Trump firing his own Attorney General,

...and replacing him with a personal sycophant with a history of bigotry and a fraud accusation hanging over his head,

...upon whom Trump is counting to block Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russia's meddling - and possibly Donald Trump's collusion in that meddling - in our 2016 Presidential election.

    And there was Donald Trump declaring war on House Democrats via tweet, threatening retaliation if they ever dared to launch an investigation involving himself or his administration:

...as if the Presidency of the United States were nothing more than a glorified game of one-upmanship.

       There was Donald Trump and his nest of vipers condemning the counting of absentee and mail-in midterm ballots Arizona and Florida, crying that counting these ballots was "stealing" the election from his party.
         But then there was Nancy Pelosi, the day after the midterm elections, calmly but in no uncertain terms assuring the country that the House of Representatives would uphold its responsibility of oversight of the Executive branch, and that when it came to conducting investigations,

"We'll know what we're doing, and we'll do it right,"

        The prediction is that those Democrats who before the midterms vowed to oppose Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House will rally around her now.
       We can only hope. Because, hate Nancy Pelosi if you must, if there was ever a moment that our country needed a Congressional leader unafraid to go after and de-fang the  vipers' nest that the White House has become, that moment is now,

References:
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/elections/democrats-opposing-pelosi-n899536

http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-congress-pelosi-speaker-20181107-story.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2018/10/18/one-third-non-incumbent-house-democratic-candidates-dont-support-nancy-pelosi/?utm_term=.2b24f7334d65

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/04/us/politics/nancy-pelosi-house-leader-women.html


https://www.cbsnews.com/news/nancy-pelosi-house-minority-leader-news-conference-democrats-win-house-of-representatives-today-2018-11-07/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Pelosi

https://www.aol.com/article/news/2018/11/07/white-house-revokes-cnn-reporter-jim-acostas-credentials-after-argument-with-trump/23583181/

https://www.newsweek.com/matthew-whitaker-jews-muslim-judges-attorney-general-1210003

https://www.yahoo.com/news/apos-two-play-game-apos-135405788.html

https://www.abc15.com/news/state/president-trump-weighs-in-on-kyrsten-sinema-taking-lead-over-martha-mcsally

https://beta.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/trump-calls-florida-ballot-count-disgrace-nelson-scott-file-lawsuits-n934451