SO WHAT YOU'RE SAYING, NANCY, IS THAT IF TRUMP REJECTS THE ELECTION RESULTS, YOU MIGHT DEFER TO HIM

This is why no one respects Democrats:

Speaker Nancy Pelosi does not believe President Trump can be removed through impeachment — the only way to do it, she said this week, is to defeat him in 2020 by a margin so “big” he cannot challenge the legitimacy of a Democratic victory.

That is something she worries about.

“We have to inoculate against that, we have to be prepared for that,” Ms. Pelosi said during an interview at the Capitol on Wednesday as she discussed her concern that Mr. Trump would not give up power voluntarily if he lost re-election by a slim margin next year.

Sitting in her office with its panoramic view of the National Mall, Ms. Pelosi — the de facto head of the Democratic Party until a presidential nominee is selected in 2020 — offered Democrats her “coldblooded” plan for decisively ridding themselves of Mr. Trump: Do not get dragged into a protracted impeachment bid that will ultimately get crushed in the Republican-controlled Senate, and do not risk alienating the moderate voters who flocked to the party in 2018 by drifting too far to the left.

“Own the center left, own the mainstream,” Ms. Pelosi, 79, said.

Pelosi worries about impeachment. I understand -- I'm ambivalent. Pelosi seems overly concerned about the risk of lost votes if Democrats choose a truly progressive presidential nominee. I think that's a simplistic reading of the polls and recent election results, but I get it. It's not what infuriates me. The reason I'm angry at Pelosi is that she essentially said: If Trump loses the 2020 presidential election and disputes the results, we mignht not be able to prevent him from staying in office.

Is that really what she believes? If so, screw that.

A victory by Democrats will be indisputable, no matter how close the election is. It will almost certainly be far more clear-cut than the results of the 2000 presidential election. If Trump threatens not to accept the election results, then there needs to be a mobilization like no other in recent history. The Democratic Party needs to fight to the death, in the courts and in the court of public opinion. The messaging has to be better than it's ever been. And you and I have to take to the streets. There need to be a million people on the Mall in Washington demanding that Trump leave office when his term is up. This has to be the last straw. We cannot tolerate this.

Does the Democratic nominee have to be a left-centrist? The most recent CNN poll says that Joe Biden does better against Trump than Elizabeth Warren does -- but it also says that Bernie Sanders does as well as Biden does. (And Beto O'Rourke does better than both, whatever that means.)



And if Democrats want to win back white working class voters, apparently ideology doesn't matter -- they just need to pick a white guy:

Head-to-head @CNN 2020 poll among whites without a college degree:

Trump +13% over Biden
Trump +15% over Buttigieg
Trump +16% over O'Rourke
Trump +17% over Sanders
Trump +28% over Harris
Trump +34% over Warren
Trump +37% over Clinton '16

— Ryan Struyk (@ryanstruyk) May 2, 2019

But we don't know how these numbers will look after several debates and once the primary season is underway. Pelosi shouldn't be telling the public that she has doubts about the electability of an entire category of candidate, just as she shouldn't be telling the public that she opposes impeachment. On impeachment, she should say whatever she wants to Democratic House members in private, but she should keep Trump off balance by not showing the party's hand on impeachment. She's not doing that.

So she's telling Trump he can get away with anything without risking impeachment, she's telling the public that she doubts a progressive Democratic presidential nominee can win, and she's telling the public that she's not sure Trump can be forced out of office if he loses and refuses to accept the electoral outcome. Not good. Not good at all.