Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi stepped down from her influential role leading House Democrats nearly a year and a half ago. Despite her departure from the spotlight, she has continued to wield significant behind-the-scenes influence and it may have saved her party from massive embarrassment this fall. Several reports have revealed that Pelosi was crucial in discreetly encouraging President Joe Biden to reconsider staying in his race for reelection.
Although Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Pelosi’s protégé, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, also addressed Democratic concerns about Biden’s ongoing campaign, it was Pelosi who consistently kept the pressure on the president to quit.
Whenever momentum for Biden’s exit began to diminish, Pelosi was reportedly there to keep the fire burning. Slate writes that the former Speaker of the House grew tired of her party’s problems caused by a demented old man and she decided to take action after Biden refused to step down gracefully.
What is clear is that the candidate is not going to be Biden. And that’s at least in part because Pelosi looked at the polls, saw no path to victory, and understood that the best way to get through to Biden was to confront the president in private, while remaining respectfully assertive in public. And it seems to have worked.
On a call with Biden, Pelosi laid out all the ways in which the numbers didn’t cut in his favor, and the president reportedly told Pelosi that he was seeing polling data suggesting he could still win. “Put Donilon on the phone,” Pelosi is said to have told the president, asking for Biden adviser Mike Donilon. “Show me what polls.”
According to what a Pelosi ally told Politico, she did not want to publicly demand Biden resign but in private was willing to “do everything in her power to make sure it happens”—including telling the president what so many of his advisers, family members, and trusted confidants apparently would not.
Politico once aptly described Pelosi as “an iron fist in a Gucci glove,” and rarely has her handiwork been so apparent. While she remained outwardly supportive of the president, she also simply ignored his repeated statements that he wasn’t dropping out of the race, keeping the door open and the pressure on for him to drop out. “I mean, if the Lord Almighty came down and said, ‘Joe, get out of the race,’ I’d get out of the race,” Biden told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos in early July. “The Lord Almighty’s not coming down.” But Pelosi did. Just a few days later, she went on MSNBC and, in a move familiar to any child of a parent skilled in a raised-eyebrow “It’s up to you” (translation: Don’t you dare), said, “It’s up to the president to decide if he’s going to run”—technically endorsing the idea that the decision was Biden’s alone, while also undermining any suggestion that it had really been made.
One Democrat briefed on the conversation said that Pelosi told Biden he “could do this the easy way or the hard way. She gave them three weeks of the easy way. It was about to be the hard way.”
That’s when the Biden house of cards collapsed.
House Democrats are relieved by their former leader’s move, writes NBC News. “I think Pelosi continues to show she’s a master political tactician,” a House Democratic leadership aide said Sunday.
Another said the former Speaker deserved 50 percent of the credit for getting Biden to stand down.
NBC News noted that “Biden was angered and hurt when Pelosi, his former running mate Barack Obama and other Democratic leaders declined to support him, sources said. But when he announced his decision Sunday, Pelosi was quick with a magnanimous statement.
‘President Joe Biden is a patriotic American who has always put our country first. His legacy of vision, values and leadership make him one of the most consequential Presidents in American history,’ she said. ‘With love and gratitude to President Biden for always believing in the promise of America and giving people the opportunity to reach their fulfillment. God blessed America with Joe Biden’s greatness and goodness.'”
Caught on Capitol Hill, Pelosi said that “anybody can run” for the nomination and that she was focused on praising Biden’s legacy.
“Anybody can run.” pic.twitter.com/aASbMnuimz
— Robert Costa (@costareports) July 22, 2024
Not that those kind words made Joe, or Jill, feel better about being cast aside.
This article originally appeared on New Conservative Post. Used with Permission.
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