At first blush, Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s declaration to late-night talk-show host Stephen Colbert last Monday that the Democrats will not only hold the House in November’s midterm elections but that they’d do so by winning more seats appeared delusional, given most polls suggest a Democrat beatdown is in the offing.

Needless to say, TDS-riddled Pelosi was incapable of leaving Donald Trump out of the equation:

I believe that we will win the – hold the House, and we will hold the House – by winning more seats. We won the forty seats, then we lost some when Trump was on the ballot. We lost some of the Trump districts, but we held enough seats to hold the House with him on the ballot.

She snarkily added: “He’s not on the ballot now. Oh, did I say his name? I didn’t mean to.”

But here’s the thing. While Pelosi has lost a few steps (and brain cells, no doubt), stupid or delusional she’s not. She remains one of the best vote-counters ever to hold the gavel, but still: Why on earth would she make such a ridiculous prediction? Was she drunk? I doubt it.

Someone else who not only doubts Pelosi’s prediction but believes he also knows why she made it, was Karl Rove, Republican political strategist and senior advisor during the George W. Bush administration. In an opinion piece published by Fox News on Monday, Rove first contrasted Pelosi with Joe Biden, whose mental acuity continues its steady decline.

“So what’s up with Nancy Pelosi? Is she delusional?” Rove asked in the op-ed, “Or, was something else at play here?” Rove went with “b” — something other than Pelosi’s declining mental acuity is at play:

Though at age 82 she’s lost a few steps, Pelosi, D-Calif., can’t be so out of it as to think that with only five seats between them and minority status, Democrats will actually hold the House in November. My bet is she said what she did to keep the bottom from falling out.

She doesn’t want Democratic donors to stop giving. She doesn’t want Democratic candidates to slack off. She doesn’t want Democratic activists to hang up their clipboards and canvassing shoes. She doesn’t want Democratic voters to fail to turn out.

Hmm. While Pelosi’s disingenuousness and bald-faced dishonesty are legendary, Rove suggested she used her appearance on Colbert’s show to project confidence because she knew her audience (those in the studio cheered her ridiculous claim) for one paramount reason. Her hope, said Rove, was to “keep money flowing, get-out-the-vote efforts chugging, and candidates charging until the end.”

Pelosi all but told Colbert the exact same thing, as transcribed by NewsMax:

When we won in 2020, and again, fewer seats, but still holding the House, we started right away to prepare for the next election in terms of organization. When you mobilize, you must own the ground to take out the vote.

You have to do that with inspiration and how we put together our messaging – and that’s the second ‘M,’ and the third is money. So we’re getting ready for the election. That was in December of 2020.

Rove further explained the method to Pelosi’s seeming madness:

If that happens, then maybe, just maybe, a few more Democrats might win who’d otherwise lose and the Republican House majority would be a smidge smaller than it would have been otherwise. Minimizing her party’s political casualties would allow liberal pundits and partisan cheerleaders like Colbert to say, “It could have been worse.”

Maybe that’s how it will play out. But for this observer, it was a sad moment. She seems a pale shadow of the Nancy Pelosi of 15 years ago when she became the first woman to wield the speaker’s gavel. After November, she’s likely to go swiftly, resigning from Congress to allow her party to attempt a reset with new leadership. Whether announced as such or not, her Colbert appearance was a late-night talk show swan song.

Win or lose the House majority in November, according to several reports, Pelosi will relinquish her gavel. As we reported in early September, well-placed sources say Madam Speaker has already selected her next job if House Republicans regain the majority in the November midterms: She wants Biden to nominate her for the vacant position of U.S. ambassador to Italy; one of the most Catholic countries in the world, home of Vatican City, and Pope Francis, who has grown increasingly frustrated with her pro-abortion activism, for which she was finally excommunicated by the San Francisco archbishop in May.

Would the move be classic Nancy Pelosi, or what?

Moreover, sources say Biden has held the ambassadorship open for Pelosi since first taking office. While “deeply Catholic” Pelosi’s hypocrisy knows no bounds, neither does her hubris. Then again, if Madam Speaker does relinquish her gavel in January, I’m going to miss kicking the old gasbag around. You?