The Empress Dowager

According to Wikipedia, Empress Dowager

is the English language translation of the title given to the mother or widow of a Chinese, Japanese, Korean, or Vietnamese monarch in the Chinese cultural sphere.

An empress dowager wielded absolute power over the harem and imperial family and sometimes even for important issues that were necessary, the emperor or officials went to empress dowager to consult. Empress Dowager's position was second after the emperor, but she was ahead of him in respect, because the emperor lowered his head in front of her to show his respect and stood in front of her with respect and politeness, even was precise in the way he spoke and faced her. Numerous empress dowagers held regency during the reign of underage emperors. Many of the most prominent empress dowagers also extended their control for long periods after the emperor was old enough to govern. This was a source of political turmoil according to the traditional view of Chinese history.

I'm not sure why nobody's yet attached this title to Speaker Emerita Pelosi, especially since she's now demonstrated that she has the effective power to remove a sitting US president. Butr now she seems to be distancing herself from Kamala. According to Fox News,

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi insisted in a new interview that she wanted an "open process" to replace President Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket but Vice President Kamala Harris "took advantage" of the opportunity.

"Many of us who were concerned about the election wanted to have an open process. It was an open process, anyone could have gotten in," Pelosi said during an interview with The Wall Street Journal.

. . . "[Harris] had the endorsement of the president, and she, politically astutely, took advantage of it and shut down — not shut down, but won the nomination. But anybody else could have gotten in," Pelosi continued.

. . . Pelosi has been repeatedly asked to explain what went into the president's decision to step aside from the 2024 race, and if she had anything to do with it. Pelosi told CNN's Jake Tapper on Monday that she did what she had to do, despite also denying that she had orchestrated the pressure campaign.

"You know what?" Pelosi said. "I had to do what I had to do. He made the decision for the country. My concern was not about the president, it was about his campaign. As he has seen with the exuberance, the excitement that has come forth in our country."

But here's my question: if she's so powerful, how come the whole Biden crisis suddenly arose this past July and nobody anticipated it? Every indication is that Washington insiders had been aware of Joe's decline beginning from the time he took office in 2021, and there seems to be at least an impression that he expected to be a one-term "interim president", at least until he decided he wouldn't, and the same insiders endorsed this, effectively forbidding an open primary season in 2024.

But with no open primary season, Robert Kennedy Jr, who had originally intended to run as a Democrat, elected to run instead as an Independent. Dean Phillips, although he was at a disadvantage for starting his campaign late, was also hindered by state Democrat parties that kept him off the primary ballot in favor of Biden.

Clearly the time to have discouraged Biden from running was at the latest mid-2023. By late in the year, key Obama adviser David Axelrod was expressing public doubts about Joe's candidacy. The question still remains why Obama and Pelosi didn't act to end Joe's candidacy when there was still time for the open primary process to select his successor that Pelosi now claims she wanted.

One answer might be that insiders were putting their faith in the "lawfare" strategy that would eliminate Trump as a potential opponent, but there are problems there, too. The first is that it became apparent early this year that none of the indictments against Trump stood a practical chance of coming to trial before the election, and only the weakest, the New York hush money case, actually did, but even that conviction had no effect on Trump's performance in the polls.

In other words, to be even theoretically successful, the "lawfare" indictmemts, like the effort to get Joe to drop out, came at least a year too late to be effective. If Nancy Pelosi had absolute power, a 21st century Empress Dowager, why couldn't she make this happen? Instead, she's apparenmtly now focusing on limiting the damage to down-ballot races:

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi privately told President Joe Biden in a recent conversation that polling shows that the president cannot defeat Donald Trump and that Biden could destroy Democrats’ chances of winning the House in November if he continues seeking a second term, according to four sources briefed on the call.

More recently, she's blaming New York Gov Hochul:

Two years ago, New York was a key reason Democrats lost the House. The party lost roughly a half-dozen competitive races, including then-campaign Chair Sean Patrick Maloney's ouster in the Hudson Valley. Pelosi blamed at least some of the party's problems on incumbent Gov. Kathy Hochul, who won in 2022 by a closer-than-expected margin that has been blamed for dragging down other Democrats downballot.

So it's Joe's fault, it's Hochul's fault, and now it looks like she's gonna put the blame on Kamala if November goes sideways. I think the bigger problem is the Empress Dowager herself. If she was running things, why didnb't they turn out better?