Nancy Pelosi, the former Speaker of the House, on wielding her immense power, knowing when to pass the torch, and the gravity of the 2024 election
stood on the floor of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, in full view of the stage and TV cameras, gripping a “We ❤ Joe” sign, eyes brimming with tears. To Joe Biden loyalists still bitter over Pelosi’s role in helping usher the president toward retirement, the theatrical cameo may have stung. But Pelosi has never worried too much about what people think — she cares more about winning.
I don’t like somebody using my face for some purpose that they’ve never even talked to me about. I think they’re dark. And “Godmother”? I don’t get that. I don’t get that at all. I don’t like them at all. We made my displeasure known to the people passing them out. They have a hell of a nerve. I mean, really?
We were just discussing people co-opting your image. And there was this point in your career when there was an incredible effort by the Republicans to caricature you in a negative light. You were being used in every attack ad in every race across the country. What was that like for you? Do you see Donald Trump and his brand of politics as an anomaly or as kind of an inevitable outcome of the path the Republican Party has taken since Newt Gingrich?
You have to understand, for 20 years I had been: policy, politics, fundraising, and the rest. I took a big responsibility for the country, but also for my state of California. And it just was time. It was joyful. That’s why I hope the president comes to this place. I had confidence in the new people coming up. My decision was not “to do it or not do it” — I was definitely doing it.
To enlarge the issue for a moment, I think that war is such outside-the-circle-of-civilized-behavior in terms of resolving conflict. Many of us, for years, have been supporters of the two-state solution. The behavior, the attitude of Netanyahu is just something that … has to be more reflective of the values that we all share, as we support the state of Israel. The president has for a long time been supporting humanitarian assistance to the Palestinians since before .
The power center of our home was my mother — for the home, but also for politics. She loved the volunteers. She entertained the women — in those days, volunteers were largely women, as they are today — the idea of respecting the volunteers, growing the troops, and making it fun for them. My whole thing about outside mobilization springs from that. The politics I grew up in, it was from the people. It was none of this “This is what we’re going to do, and we’ll tell everybody.
I’m a virtuoso legislator. I know the issues, I’ve been in Congress a while. I can’t answer for their failure or their lack of consensus on their side — that’s something you have to talk to them about — I know that on our side, we had a shared vision, shared values, we worked together for what the priorities would be, and built that consensus. That didn’t mean that every time we would have unanimity, but we would always have enough consensus to pass the legislation.
I never like to mix politics and religion, but I see some of that happening on the other side. It’s very sad. But they believe what they believe, and they put a billion dollars into to affect elections, which is most unfortunate.One of the things we’re trying to do — and it’s what’s unfinished business from before, because we didn’t have 60 votes in the Senate — is pass the For the People Act and the Voting Rights Act together. John Lewis wrote the first 300 pages of the For the People Act.
The thing is, we consider ourselves a bandwagon in the House. You have to do what you have to do to get the votes to be as much of a compromise as possible to make the biggest difference in the lives of the American people. We consider a convoy going as slow as the slowest ship. I talked about the 60 votes, but in some instances, 99 senators are not enough.
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