President Trump and likely House Speaker Nancy Pelosi are about to co-star in a Washington drama that could take us all the way through the 2020 presidential election.

It’s a drama that has Colorado’s soon-to-be four Democratic representatives in Congress divided over Pelosi ahead of the House’s Jan. 3 vote on the next speaker.

In a closed-door House Democratic caucus meeting on Wednesday, in which Pelosi was nominated for speaker, Rep. Diana DeGette of Denver and Rep.-elect Joe Neguse of Boulder voted in her favor, while Rep. Ed Perlmutter of Arvada and Rep.-elect Jason Crow of Aurora voted against her.

All four had signaled their stands on Pelosi ahead of the vote.

> RELATED: Democrats nominate Pelosi for House speaker; here’s how Colo. reps voted

Assuming the San Francisco Democrat regains the speaker’s gavel in January, she and Trump will find themselves as frequent sparring partners – and, occasionally, a negotiating pair – as they try to generate legislative accomplishments, navigate the Russia investigation and best position their respective parties for electoral success in two years.

“This is clearly the most important relationship in Washington right now and for the next two years,” said Jim Manley, a Democratic strategist and former chief spokesman for Harry Reid, the retired Nevada senator who led Democrats in the Senate from 2005 to 2017. “If there is any hope of getting anything done, it is largely going to rely on how these two operate.”

Democrats generally didn’t think Trump got off to an auspicious start with his White House press conference the day after the midterm elections, followed by the ouster of Attorney General Jeff Sessions and his temporary replacement by Matthew Whitaker, a Justice Department official with a dimmer view of Robert Mueller’s Russia probe.

But the president did make some overtures to Pelosi and talked about “beautiful” bipartisan deal-making.

“I really respected what Nancy said last night about bipartisanship and getting together and uniting,” Trump told reporters Nov. 7. “She used the word ‘uniting’ and she used the word, the bipartisanship statement, which is so important because that’s what we should be doing.”

He even offered via Twitter, perhaps tongue-in-cheek, to help swing some Republican votes for speaker her way if Democrats “give her a hard time.” (Pelosi quickly said no thanks.)

Told that Trump said she deserves the speakership, Pelosi demurred. “I don’t think anybody deserves anything – it’s not about what you have done, it’s what you can do,” she said at a Capitol Hill press conference following the election. “And I think I’m the best person to go forward, to unify, to negotiate.”

Pelosi previously served as speaker of the House from 2007 to 2011, the first woman to wield the gavel.

Is there anything to negotiate with Trump? “There’s plenty of opportunity,” Pelosi said. “Democrats come to this majority with the responsibility not to Democrats – it’s not to Democrats or Republicans – it’s to the United States of America. The fact is we’d like to work together.”

Trump even suggested it might be “a much easier path” to dealing with cohesive Democrats rather than the fractious Republican congressional majorities that struggled to pass his agenda for the past two years.

“Because the Democrats do really stick together well,” he told reporters. “I don’t agree with them on a lot of policy, but I agree with them on sticking together. They stick together great.”

No one expects the Kumbaya singing to last.

“I have two words for the Trump versus Pelosi confrontation: cage match,” said Democratic strategist Brad Bannon.

“Trump is tough but Pelosi is a wily politician who knows how to effectively navigate through the corridors of power,” Bannon said. “She made it clear … that she believes in congressional oversight of the executive branch.”

That oversight “doesn’t mean we go looking for a fight,” Pelosi said. “But it means that if we see a need to go forward, we will.”

Within hours of these remarks she tweeted, “It is impossible to read Attorney General Sessions’ firing as anything other than another blatant attempt” by Trump to “undermine” and “end” the Mueller investigation.

Such oversight is going to be a major sticking point with the White House.

“You know, I keep hearing about investigations fatigue,” Trump said after the elections. “Like from the time – almost from the time I announced I was going to run, they’ve been giving us this investigation fatigue. It’s been a long time. They got nothing. Zero. You know why? Because there is nothing.” He promised a “war-like posture” if Democrats pursued him.

“They can do whatever they want and I can do whatever I want,” Trump said when asked about Democratic efforts to force him to release his tax returns.

“Democrats can walk and chew gum at the same time,” Manley said of the need to balance hearings and investigations with legislating.

Millions voted for Democratic candidates to check Trump and the Republicans, not to work with them. Trump is a political brawler who helped Republicans defy the national environment and add seats in the Senate by pounding away at the Democrats night after night in raucous rallies unlike that of any recent sitting president.

“Trump will go very hard at her because he likes to pick on women and because she is the face of the Democratic Party until it selects a nominee,” said Bannon, the Democratic strategist. “But Pelosi will give as good as she gets from the president. In contrast, [Senate Majority Leader] Mitch McConnell knows he has to work with the speaker. The majority leader went out of his way yesterday to describe her as a ‘professional.'”

Pelosi would owe her speakership in large part to Trump’s toxicity in the suburbs, not to her own popularity.

CNN’s exit poll found that only about three in 10 voters viewed the California Democrat favorably while more than half were unfavorable. Those were worse numbers than Trump’s.

Many Democrats running in swing districts refused to say they would support her for speaker; some were outright opposed.

The Republican National Committee circulated a list of about a dozen newly elected Democrats who said they would either vote against Pelosi or would back someone else, along with nearly 20 others who assiduously avoided the topic on the campaign trail. A few question whether her grip on the speakership is even secure.

“Pelosi’s supporters argue that Democrats can vote against her in the caucus vote in order to keep that promise and still support her on the floor in January,” the Los Angeles Times reported ahead of Wednesday’s vote by Democrats.

That won’t stop Trump from flailing away at her, however. On the campaign trail, he portrayed every Democrat as a liberal Pelosi lackey.

But high-profile conflicts with women are tricky for Trump, given his history of clashes ranging from Rosie O’Donnell to Megyn Kelly.

He won the presidency in a close battle against Hillary Clinton – “Such a nasty woman,” he said of her during one of the debates – and has hammered U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters of California as “low-IQ,” Nevada Sen.-elect Jacky Rosen as “Wacky Jacky” and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren as “Pocahontas.”

He has similarly derisive nicknames for many male political opponents, but the president who was heard in the “Access Hollywood” tape gets more blowback for the way he talks about women.

“She’ll be respectful of the office [of president]. She treats Republicans with respect,” Manley said of Pelosi.

But if she encounters any sexism from Trump, he added, “she’ll cut him off at the knees.”

Nevertheless, there is at least some potential for compromise. Pelosi is a good-government liberal who would like at least some legislation to move through Congress. Trump, despite his record so far, would probably like to go down in history as a master deal-maker rather than one of the most conservative presidents.

Trump famously sided with Pelosi and her Senate counterpart Chuck Schumer on a government spending fight last year over the congressional Republican leadership team.

He then created the impression, later dashed, that he had come to an agreement on immigration with “Chuck and Nancy” that would give legal status to the young undocumented immigrants covered by Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.

“Trump’s got all the flexibility in the world,” said Manley. “He doesn’t care about the Republican Party. If he wants to cut a deal, he can cut a deal. The Democratic caucus understands that if there’s a good deal to be had, they’re going to go for it. But again, they’re not going to cut deals just for the sake of a deal itself.”

During her previous stint as speaker, Pelosi kept the more extreme measures for dealing with President George W. Bush at bay. The drive for impeachment was relegated to the far left of the caucus, as was mostly the case during this year’s midterm election campaign.

“Pelosi and Trump do have one thing in common,” Bannon said. “Neither of them wants an impeachment vote.”

“If President Trump thinks he can maneuver Pelosi to a place where she’s cutting deals just for the sake of cutting deals, he’s sadly mistaken,” Manley said. “He seemed to suggest in his press conference that he can pressure her into cutting deals and that’s not going to happen.”

Some of that may be Trump’s own doing.

“I have a sneaking suspicion that given the president’s rhetoric, the threshold that the Democratic caucus is going to insist on to cut deals with Trump has gotten a bit higher,” Manley added.

Republicans are skeptical that threshold can ever be met.

“Pelosi is very effective at unifying her team,” said GOP strategist John Feehery. “She is much less effective at finding compromise. So I would expect her … to do a bunch of nothing.”

Pelosi could wind up in a situation like her immediate Republican predecessors, Paul Ryan and John Boehner: under constant pressure from the more ideological members of her caucus and voters to produce results they don’t really have the numbers on Capitol Hill to achieve.

“I think they absolutely have to worry about that,” said Christine Todd Whitman, the former New Jersey governor and Environmental Protection Agency head under George W. Bush who has since emerged as a leading centrist. “If they want to leave any kind of legacy, they are going to have to get things done. It’s so polarized that they’re not going to get it done if they keep moving to the Left.”

Under this scenario, progressives and socialists like the newly elected Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York would form a left-wing version of the right’s Freedom Caucus and make it difficult for Pelosi to keep her small but racially and (to a lesser extent) ideologically diverse conference together on key votes. They would have the majority for the purposes of organizing the House, but not for functionally moving legislation.

“This is one of the challenges for Democrats, the expectations of what they might be able to accomplish by winning the House,” said Republican strategist Christian Ferry. “They aren’t going to be in a position to govern, with or without support of the [Democratic Socialists of America]-type members. What they will be able to try to do is obstruct and with that as their goal, I think the Democrats and socialists will be aligned.”

Democrats insist this won’t happen. First, they argue that the party will be able to come together for the same reason it was able to win in the first place – they have a core group who aren’t too far left for their constituents.

Second, unlike the Freedom Caucus, they contend that staunch progressives are inherently more committed to governance than people who want to cut government.

“The Democratic Party is a big-tent party and always has been,” said Jeb Fain, communications director for House Majority PAC. “The incoming Democratic caucus will be undoubtedly be large and diverse, but there’s a shared focus by the candidates across the ideological spectrum on kitchen-table economic issues. Democrats are actually bringing solutions to the table and ultimately united by a very real interest in getting things done.”

There’s still some hope for centrism. “Nobody’s going to have such a plurality that they can afford to ignore, for instance, the Problem Solvers Caucus,” Whitman said. “And hopefully, we can grow that.”

A few Democrats conceded it was possible a younger generation of progressives might be more inclined to blow things up than their forebears. They also acknowledge liberal activists want them to deliver. But they maintain this won’t lead to paralysis.

“I get the idea that some are saying that the Left will prevent Pelosi from trying to reach a compromise,” said Manley. “I am 100 percent confident that that is in fact not correct.”

Still, the Resistance is about to arrive in Washington and come face to face with an even Trumpier Senate than existed before the election.

Confrontations over tax returns, the emoluments clause, Mueller’s independence and the substance of the Russia investigation loom. Pelosi may be on top of a septuagenarian leadership team trying cope with these realities, plus Trump’s unpredictability, while many members of her party are running for president.

“A big thing to remember,” said one Democratic consultant, “is that Trump and a lot of the [Democratic] senators are running for president. Pelosi isn’t.” It could add up to even more political intrigue than we witnessed in 2018.

Pelosi could be an important transitional figure on the way to the next period of unified Democratic government, a bridge from old school liberals to avowed socialists who want to abolish ICE.

The opposite result is also possible: the missteps of Republican congressional majorities gave the last two Democratic presidents, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, a much better shot at re-election than they had when their own party ran the House.

Colorado Politics contributed.