Nancy Pelosi knew and used her power. So should Democrats

It’s fashionable now to criticize Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic gerontocracy. The party, after all, has a yawning generation gap that has stymied younger politicians from attaining power, ascending to leadership and freshening Democrats’ image and agenda. But if there was one member of Capitol Hill’s answer to the Thursday Murder Club who should have remained in office — and in party leadership — it was Pelosi, a master tactician and political brawler who was the most effective speaker of the House in modern political history, and the first woman to hold the job.

Instead, she chose to set an example that few other elderly Democrats have followed. In the wake of the party’s unexpected showing in the 2022 midterms, Pelosi announced she was stepping down after more than 20 years of being the Democratic House leader, a tenure that included two historic terms as speaker, standing in opposition to President George W. Bush’s agenda, as a governing partner to Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden, and as a bulwark against President Donald Trump’s abuses of power. 

Now, at 85, Pelosi is bowing out of elective politics altogether. In a video released Thursday, she announced she would not be seeking reelection to Congress and would retire at the end of her term. 

Praise has been coming her way in the wake of her announcement — including from the likes of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., who hailed Pelosi for “deliver[ing] for her party.” On this Greene is right: It’s safe to say that any Democratic triumph or victory over the past two decades bears, in one way or another, Pelosi’s fingerprints. She’s the reason we have the Affordable Care Act. The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, the American Recovery and Investment Act, the Inflation Reduction Act, the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell — she shepherded them all through Congress. In the face of tremendous opposition, and with democracy under threat, she held the Democratic Party together throughout the four interminable years of Trump’s first term.

Despite Pelosi’s advanced age and the desire for generational change, I can’t be the only one who has wondered how the past 11 months might have been different had she still been speaker. The Baltimore native, who has always had fire in her belly, Christ in her heart and strategy ticking through her keen mind, would certainly have been more effective than her successor, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y. has been in rallying House Democrats — and prodding Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., to whom Jeffries has often seemed subservient — in standing against Trump. 

Pelosi has steadfastly refused to function as Jeffries’ puppet master. Instead she has been more akin to a firefighter — willing to help, but only when her services are needed and requested by the overly scripted and cautious minority leader. For better and mostly for worse, she has allowed Jeffries to stagger on his own two feet.

To be fair, the category five hurricane that has been Trump’s second term has made his first look, by comparison, like a tropical storm. As formidable as Pelosi was as Democratic leader, she too would have been tested by everything the administration has unleashed since January.

But Nancy Pelosi would not have been timid. She would have both known and used her power. There would have been fire coming from the speaker’s office, and it wouldn’t have been opposition for opposition’s sake. From the moment she learned of Trump’s narrow election victory in November 2024, Pelosi would have set about plotting a strategy to minimize the damage to the country and its institutions.

She would have set a clear Democratic message for the caucus and party to follow, and coordinated with outside interest groups and elected officials across the country to ensure that everyone was singing from the same hymnal. In March, when House Democrats voted — all but one — to oppose a draconian Republican stopgap budget bill, which nearly resulted in a government shutdown, she would never have allowed Schumer to cave to Republicans — and certainly not in the fashion he did, by humiliating her caucus and stoking massive party anger that has yet to abate. Most importantly, Pelosi would never have picked a fight she couldn’t have won and come away with nothing to show for it.

Among Pelosi’s greatest talents was her ability to slice Donald Trump down to size, a skill Jeffries has never been able to accomplish. Partly by virtue of her gender and her cutting style, Pelosi had a way of needling Trump that served Democrats well, knocking the president on his heels, causing him to lash out and leading him into well-set political traps. As a senior Republican once admitted to POLITICO, “It’s a disaster. It plays right into her hands.”

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Many remember the iconic images that emerged in the wake of a fiery clash between Pelosi and Trump at the White House in December 2018. You know the ones: There she is, scolding him like a naughty toddler in the Oval Office, warning him to not “characterize the strength that I bring to this meeting as the leader of the House Democrats.” Then, moments later, there she is again: Exiting the White House, coolly lethal in sunglasses, stilettos and a funnel neck MaxMara coat the color of a tawny marmalade. A hit woman who has made her kill cleanly, with no blood splatter.

Less remembered is what came after: Beautifully vicious remarks — made behind closed doors but that, as she knew fully well, were destined to leak — about Trump’s manhood. “I was trying to be the mom,” Pelosi said. “It goes to show you: You get into a tinkle contest with a skunk, you get tinkle all over you. It’s like a manhood thing with him — as if manhood can be associated with him.”

Since Trump’s return to office in January, Democrats have had no moments like that — none that have inspired party officials and the base alike to let out a collective whoop and make them feel that, as dark as things are, there’s a political bada*s ready to swish into the West Wing and refuse to be cowed. 

In those moments during Trump’s first term, there was no doubt who was leading the Democratic Party. It wasn’t former President Barack Obama or former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the most recent Democratic presidential nominee. It wasn’t any of the dozen or so politicians who were eyeing 2020 White House bids. And it sure as hell wasn’t Chuck Schumer.

It was Nancy D’Alesandro Pelosi.

Now, with Democrats wandering the political wilderness after Trump’s reelection, there is no clear party leader. According to a poll released by POLITICO on Friday, Democratic voters are unable to name the party’s leader. When asked to do so, 21% of respondents answered “I don’t know” and 11% said “Nobody.” At 16.1%, former Vice President and 2024 presidential nominee Kamala Harris was the only Democrat to break double digits. Hakeem Jeffries netted 7.4%, the same as Barack Obama, who has been gone from office for nearly nine years.

The poll is a damning indictment not only of the Democratic Party, but also of Jeffries, who has failed to assume the mantle of opposition leader that speakers of the House have historically filled against presidents of different parties. In the 1980s, as President Ronald Reagan set out to cut spending on social programs, Democratic Speaker Tip O’Neill stood in firm opposition, rivaled only by Sen. Ted Kennedy in his stature as party leader. Two years into Bill Clinton’s presidency, Republican Speaker Newt Gingrich forged his “Contract with America.” Then came the era of Pelosi.

During her first campaign for Congress, Pelosi’s slogan was “A voice that will be heard.” Too stilted in phrasing to our modern poll-tested ears, it was nevertheless, as she said in the video of her retirement announcement, “prophetic.”

Although she was never a great orator, her voice was heard loud and clear, defining an era in American politics. It will likely be a long time before Democrats see the likes of her kind again.