After all those glurgy farewell parties and sendoffs, lionizing Nancy Pelosi as the greatest House Speaker in the history of the world, the longtime San Francisco Democrat was expected to go riding off into the sunset, having made a shambles of the U.S., but not to worry, because a fancy Italian villa retirement was her next stop, as a sort of middle finger to the America she made a mess in.

That was too much to expect. Seems the former House Speaker has decided to come back for an encore, unable to take her fingers off the levers of power. She couldn't keep herself away, not even for a year.

According to The Guardian:

The former House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi has announced that she will be seeking re-election in 2024. The 83-year-old Democrat representing California’s 11th district announced the news on Wednesday among volunteers and labor allies in San Francisco.

Pelosi went on to tweet about her plans, saying: “Now more than ever our city needs us to advance San Francisco values and further our recovery. Our country needs America to show the world that our flag is still there, with liberty and justice for ALL. That is why I am running for reelection – and respectfully ask for your vote.”

Pelosi, who has represented San Francisco since 1987, served as House speaker twice. Her first tenure as House speaker was from 2007 to 2011, during which she made history by becoming the first female speaker. Pelosi went on to lead the House of Representatives again from 2019 to the beginning of this year.

What fresh hell is this? At a time when voters are growing concerned about the advanced ages and extended tenures of their representatives and president, who should come galloping in to add to the rubble? Pelosi is 83, and before she left office, was already showing signs of garbled senility.

It's an interesting recrudescence because there are so many things that might be going on.

Could she have had a bad experience in Italy, which has elected a conservative prime minister and has considerable nationalist sentiment these days, coming to long for her native stomping grounds in Congress? There's no place like home...

Is she looking for public office to facilitate some of those amazingly timed stock trades she and hers executed during her time in Congress, which made her very, very rich? Did she make a bad bet somewhere and need to replenish the family fortunes?

Or is the problem Joe Biden, and Pelosi's reading that since he's going to lose, she's going to have to be there to check an incoming President Trump, there to plot with Rep. Adam Schiff and all the other freaks who launched one hoax after another without consequence, making President Trump's presidency an utterly miserable and fettered affair? 

Or is the problem her fellow Democrats, including her successor, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, not measuring up to her tough standards? Not conniving and sleazy enough, not good enough to win back the House for her party, so she needs to be there to steer from behind? If Pelosi gets in there a second time, Jeffries is in for a hell of a ride. He might even step back for "health reasons" or "to spend more time with his family." 

Or is it an indicator that Democrats are convinced that they will win back the House in 2024 and she'd like to be there to distribute the spoils? Have they got 2024 all rigged up nice? This seems to be the direction the Guardian's report was leaning. She can't bear to take her hands off the levers of power.

Was the fact that she did her announcement rally with her union buddies, particularly those in the teachers' unions, indicative of who's behind this bad idea? They've got a lot of money, as does Pelosi who left office with a big political war chest. Perhaps tThey need someone vicious now to enact their agenda on trans rights, on school lockdowns, on halting school choice, given the public opposition to all of those ideas? They knew just who to call.

Could California politics have something to do with this -- her political machine needing her on the ground in the Capitol in order to pave the way for either Gavin Newsom, or Kamala Harris, to take the White House, given Joe Biden's senility and unpopularity? Democrat internal politics can be pretty vicious -- because that's the way Pelosi made it.

Whatever it is, it's something nefarious. It seems quite likely she will win, yet something seems off. It's a very strange comeback.

It comes at such a strange time, too, when the whole country has decided, according to polls, that Joe Biden is too old to run for office, and major attention has been focused on the jurassic gerontocrats with extended terms populating Congress, too -- Sen. Dianne Feinstein, Sen. Mitch McConnell, Sen. John Fetterman. The national narrative is about getting them out. How strange it is to see yet another gerontocrat, eager to get back in. That's the weirdest aspect of this, and the most likely indicator that something nefarious is going on.

Let's hope against hope that somehow ... she loses. This woman is a fiend and doesn't even deserve a nice retirement, let alone another grip on power.

Image: Gage Skidmore, via Wikimedia Commons // CC BY-SA 2.0 // image edited