Consider This from NPR - A year after her speakership, Nancy Pelosi's influence remains strong

Episode Date: July 26, 2024

Among the many Democratic Party insiders who publicly or privately urged President Joe Biden to reconsider running for reelection, one played an outsized role: Nancy Pelosi.Pelosi is 84 years old — older than Biden — and no longer in House leadership.But her part in the pressure campaign that led to a change in the Democratic ticket shows: she is still very much a leader, and her political pull remains strong.For sponsor-free episodes of Consider This, sign up for Consider This+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Among the many Democratic Party insiders who publicly or privately urged Joe Biden to reconsider running for president again, one played an outsized role. It's up to the president to decide if he is going to run. We're all encouraging him to to make that decision because time is running short. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi went on MSNBC's Morning Joe, a show that Biden is known to watch, urging the president to make a decision. That got a lot of attention because at that point, Biden had said repeatedly he had made a decision to stay in the race. According to a lot of behind the scenes reporting, Pelosi also spoke with fellow members of Congress and major donors and eventually the president himself, expressing concern about polls that showed Biden was losing ground at swing states he needed to win. Eventually, Biden got that message.

Nothing can come in the way of saving our democracy. That includes personal ambition. Nancy Pelosi is herself 84 years old. That's older than President Biden. She's no longer in House leadership, and yet she remains a highly effective leader within the Democratic Party. But I want to assure my enemies that it will take more than one election to take me down. If you want to get rid of Nancy Pelosi, you better be ready to cut off my head and bury it separately from my body. That comedy sketch, by the way, is from 2010. She's been in power for so long that three different cast members and two guest hosts have played her over the years on Saturday Night Live.

Consider this. The last week in American politics has been historic. President Biden making way for Vice President Harris atop the Democratic ticket. And in the background, the first woman to be Speaker in the House has played a key role in all of it. From NPR, I'm Scott Detrow. It's Consider This from NPR. Nancy Pelosi will release her memoir soon. Its title is The Art of Power, My Story as America's First Woman speaker of the House. She still has power and she used it to help organize the pressure campaign that led to President Biden stepping down from the top of the Democratic ticket. NPR political correspondent, I think these past few weeks have really underscored how singularly powerful she remains within the Democratic Party, even though she's not minority leader anymore. I think that's right. I think if you go back to the evening of the first presidential debate, when it became pretty clear that this campaign was going to have a problem, Democrats had hit the panic button. And who do Democrats call when they hit the panic button, especially if the panic is about the president? And the answer was pretty quickly Nancy Pelosi.

If you talk to lawmakers on the Hill, certainly donors, the sense of going to her and saying, what do you think this means? Can he still win? I'm worried about my district. All those what they call frontline Democrats, the ones in the swing seats that will help determine the majority next year. She's a first point person you call to get political advice. I think the one thing that's not disputed about Nancy Pelosi is she's pretty good political skills and people still respect her take on this. I do think it was notable to me that an aide was quoted in the LA Times making clear that she wasn't making calls, she was taking calls. And I think that's right. I think that she served as sort of a vessel for Democrats to come to with

their panic and also in a way, a bit of a green light to say you can go public with this. Just one example of that is when Adam Schiff, fellow California Democrat, one of her top allies in Congress, who's also a candidate for the Senate, when he put out a statement calling on Joe Biden to step aside, it was very widely seen as something that would have had the blessing of Nancy Pelosi because there's no way he would have made a statement like that without calling her first. What played out publicly was often very subtle, and yet it was very powerful. And let's go back to that Morning Joe appearance, because I think I gasped. I gasped seeing that quote. And I think a lot of observers would have said, she wasn't saying get out of the race now, but she said a lot by not saying that much. Can we just talk about why that was such a key public moment? Yes. And I think it's so key to how Pelosi does things, because if you look back at all of her public statements,

she never publicly suggested Joe Biden should get out of this race. She said he will make a decision and we'll go with what he does. Time is running short. He has a decision to make some version of that. But it left the door open. And like you said, when you gasped, when you heard it, I was in an email exchange with Democratic staffer on the Hill, and they were basically saying, look, like, it's over. He's staying in the race, like, we're just going to have to deal with it. And then immediately was like, never mind. Someone just sent me what Nancy Pelosi said on Morning Joe, the door's back open again, like her doing that, especially when you consider it was the same venue that Joe Biden had gone on a day or two previously to assert that he was not

getting out of the race, the choice to use the same media platform to say, hey, maybe he has a decision to make was it sort of heard all over Washington. Can you just connect the dots a little more, though, of Pelosi saying he needs to make a decision and saying it on his favorite show, but also saying he needs to have the space of this NATO meeting, which was happening at that moment? Why all of those things signaled that to fellow Democrats? I think the timing thing is a good place to start, because the thing you have to realize also about Nancy Pelosi, aside from her tenure on Capitol Hill, is she started her career in state politics. And she was a Democratic National Committee woman who eventually served as the California State Party chair. And she is uniquely aware of how the nominating process works

and what the calendar looks like. And the understanding that if Democrats were going to change their ticket, it had to happen prior to the convention. Because once you nominate someone, it gets a lot more complicated to change the ticket after that. So I think it's just sort of those nuts and bolts of politics that she uniquely understands. And also to the timing of it, decorum, decorum, decorum. I don't think that Pelosi would ever want to be seen as undermining an American president when there was foreign leaders on U.S. soil. I also think you have to remember that these two people are friends. They have a shared Catholic faith. They have two of the longest tenures in Washington politics. Most of the greatest legislative successes in their careers have relied on one another. They have a certain bond or at least a certain relationship that this particular week. But I feel like with Pelosi, there has been a consolidating of power

and also an appreciation of the power that she has that has increased over the years. Like there was this whole, when I was covering the Hill with you, when the Democrats regained control of the House in 2018, there was this brief moment of media chatter of will she have the votes to become speaker? Of course, she became speaker. She immediately really positions herself in a way that she was standing up to Donald Trump, blocking Trump policies, gaining power. Then you have Republican House speakers come in and really struggle with bigger margins than she had. Is it that she has consolidated power or just there's been an appreciation of time of, wow, look at how much this person did?

I think it's a little bit of both. I think it's also because Nancy Pelosi knows what it's like to relinquish power when maybe you weren't entirely ready, but you could tell it was time. When they lost the majority and she made clear that she would not run for leadership anymore, she actually said the words she's going to help the next generation or the new generation of leaders. She has, by all accounts, I think really tried to stay in the shadows in this Congress. She's tried to be like a helper for Hakeem Jeffries, the new Democratic leader. I don't think she's wanted to be seen as like constantly the mom constantly popping her head in the door to see if the kids are doing OK. But I do think that because she gave up that power, people still go to her for her opinion. It's quiet influence. It's not overt influence. And to your

point about when they tossed out Kevin McCarthy, there was this moment where there was like, hey, are Democrats going to save Kevin McCarthy? Could they offer up some votes? And Nancy Pelosi, once again, was really critical in that moment where she put out a statement that it was, you know, to the effect of her words were like, it's Republicans' job to elect a Republican speaker. Democrats will vote for Democrats. And again, it was one of those subtle things she said where everyone was like, OK, case closed. Like, no Democrats are going to vote. So I think that she's been a supportive force for Hakeem Jeffries because, look, like Hakeem Jeffries, the current Democratic leader, he's green. He's new in the job.

Someone like him could not have gone on Morning Joe and said the exact same words and had the exact same effect. I don't think that's an exaggeration to say. So I think the fact that she is still in a position of power, but was willing to give up power when it was the time was right, I think has left her. She's in a place where she still commands a lot of respect. Yeah. One of the things you and others have pointed out over the years is that Pelosi is partially effective because she truly doesn't care what her national approval rating is. She doesn't need to be charismatic on television. And that's kind of unique in national politics in 2024. I don't know if it's unique in politics, but I think it's unique to the people that are seen as

truly powerful within politics. And I would put in this column with Pelosi people like former Senate leader Harry Reid of Nevada and current Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell are all sort of seen as these three titans of Congress who are known for both their political instincts and their ability to get policy done. And all three sort of known for not particularly caring about what the media says about them, whether they're popular or not, but whether they were effective and whether they could get things done. And I think part of that is they were willing to be criticized if it helped other people in the party. Right. I think she would argue and I think people like Mitch McConnell would argue is somebody has to be willing to do the unpopular things to get things done. And that takes leadership. And not a lot of people in politics either have the skill to do it or the willingness to do it.

And I think that is one thing that makes her unique, especially, frankly, as the only woman to have ever done it. And now, especially with Kamala Harris, the nominee, you have this really interesting power dynamic, comes from San Francisco politics, any sense what their relationship is and what that relationship could be like if Harris is in the White House and Pelosi is still in name a backbencher, but clearly not in Congress? I mean, it's certainly not as warm of a relationship as it was with the late Dianne Feinstein of California, who was like family to Nancy Pelosi. But they've clearly known each other for decades through California politics. What I think is interesting now is if you go back a little bit to the 2016 election, Pelosi was intending to retire after that election. She has since said that publicly, that she thought Hillary Clinton was going to be the first female president of the United States. And that would be sort of a capstone on Nancy Pelosi's career, and she could bow out. Obviously, history didn't play out that way. I think as we sit here today, Nancy Pelosi still sees her purpose in life to defeat Donald Trump and not allow his return to power. So I think that's probably more her direct mission. But if in a world where Kamala Harris wins,

I think to me, part of the question is, does Kamala Harris call Nancy Pelosi and say, you know, I hope you're not going anywhere? Because look, regardless of who wins this presidential election, it's going to be really narrow majorities in Congress one way or another. The era of the big majority isn't really there anymore. So if you have a few seat majority or minority and you need effective legislators on the Hill, Pelosi is still someone that President Biden relied on to get his agenda passed in the first two years of his term. And someone that I think a president like Kamala Harris would want to rely on to help get whatever her agenda might be passed. Political correspondent Susan Davis, thank you so much.

You're welcome. This episode was produced by Mark Rivers. It was edited by Patrick Jaron Watananan and Kelsey Snell. Our executive producer is Sammy Yenigan. Thanks to our Consider This Plus listeners who support the work of NPR journalists and help keep public radio strong. Supporters also hear every episode without messages from sponsors.

You can learn more at plus.npr.org. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Scott Detrow.