Late one night in July 2022 when she was House speaker, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) got word that House Republicans had pulled support for a bipartisan bill to reenergize America\u2019s semiconductor industry.<\/p>\n
Some liberal Democrats were also squeamish about providing corporate welfare, so some of her advisers suggested pulling the bill from the next day\u2019s schedule.<\/p>\n
\u201cLet me do it my way,\u201d Pelosi recalled, giving instructions to her staff. \u201cGo tell the Republicans to go to hell. We\u2019re going to go without them. We\u2019re going to go without them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Not a single Democrat voted against the bill. Once it was clearly passing and heading to President Joe Biden\u2019s desk for his signature, a couple dozen Republicans voted for what would become a popular piece of legislation.<\/p>\n
Now the former House speaker, Pelosi recounted that story in a 100-minute interview Wednesday with a half-dozen veteran reporters and columnists who chronicled her 20-year reign as the Democratic leader. The long sit-down was part of her book tour promoting \u201cThe Art of Power,\u201d which includes many of these tales of her rise, then fall, and then rise back up to the most powerful post in Congress.<\/p>\n
The book, which she started planning many years ago, serves as a lesson in how she wielded power more effectively than most of the other 55 speakers \u2014 all White men. It also published just in the wake of another illustration of Pelosi\u2019s continuing influence, even as she has rejoined the rank-and-file without even a seat on a legislative committee.<\/p>\n
Many media appearances over the past week have focused on Pelosi\u2019s behind-the-scenes role in helping advise fellow Democrats in their effort to push Biden to step aside from his reelection effort.<\/p>\n
While she says she did not call anyone, Pelosi acknowledged receiving \u201chundreds\u201d of messages from concerned Democrats. She believes the outpouring of support for Vice President Kamala Harris\u2019s campaign has validated the actions to persuade Biden to step aside, but it\u2019s left her more than four-decade-friendship with the president upended.<\/p>\n
\u201cHistory\u2019s in a hurry. We\u2019re right in the center of it all here. At some point, I will come to terms with my own piece, my own role in this,\u201d she told reporters Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Pelosi intended to write this book many years ago and focus on four key issues that framed her first stint as House speaker: her battles with China over human rights abuses; her opposition to the Iraq War; her critical help to the Bush administration in passing the 2008 financial relief package; and passing the 2010 Affordable Care Act.<\/p>\n
But by the time she got around to writing after leaving her leadership post at the end of 2022, Pelosi had experienced the Donald Trump presidency, the 2021 Capitol insurrection and the brutal attack on her husband in October 2022 \u2014 all topics that had to be addressed.<\/p>\n
In the preface she writes about \u201cKnow Your Why,\u201d a slogan she has cited for years as advice to those who want to run for elective office so that they can be grounded by the right principles in the job. Her \u201cwhy\u201d has always been a three-word mantra \u2014 \u201cfor the children\u201d \u2014 signifying leaving the planet cleaner and safer with a bottom-up economy.<\/p>\n
But throughout the Wednesday discussion, and after her actions last month, it is clear that Pelosi has a new \u201cwhy\u201d in this epilogue phase of her career: defeating Trump.<\/p>\n
She pounded a table nine times as she explained that her motivation in opposing Biden\u2019s continued campaign was solely about stopping Trump. \u201cMy goal in life was that that man would never set foot in the White House again,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s an echo in her second stint as speaker, which began with the last two years of Trump\u2019s presidency, of her first tenure, beginning with George W. Bush\u2019s final two years in the Oval Office.<\/p>\n
Each of those congressional terms, 2007-09 and 2019-21, included strong clashes with the GOP president but then also included major bipartisan deals on global crises that ended up being a political burden for Democrats and not Republicans.<\/p>\n
In the fall of 2008 as the financial system collapsed, Pelosi\u2019s Democrats provided the vast majority of votes for the $700 billion bailout, stabilizing the system and avoiding an economic depression. But once Obama took office with massive Democratic majorities, Republicans blamed his administration and Pelosi for the lingering Great Recession and its high unemployment.<\/p>\n
Voters recoiled as the titans of Wall Street avoided any criminal liability as millions of homes were lost and the unemployment rate topped 10 percent. \u201cNobody paid a price,\u201d Pelosi lamented.<\/p>\n
Obama officials were unsuccessful in creating a campaign to sell their legislative achievements \u2014 including a nearly $800 billion stimulus that cut taxes on the middle class \u2014 and it all got lumped into bitter feelings about the economy and the bank bailout.<\/p>\n
\u201cI truly believe that was why we lost in 2010,\u201d Pelosi said, a midterm drubbing that lost 63 seats and handed the GOP the majority for eight years.<\/p>\n
In 2020, fresh off impeaching Trump over his Ukraine actions, Pelosi again worked with the GOP administration when the coronavirus pandemic killed millions and shuttered parts of the global economy. Democrats again provided most of the votes for several relief packages that tallied almost $3 trillion \u2014 even sending direct cash payments to taxpayers that were signed by none other than Trump.<\/p>\n
Biden won in November 2020 and Democrats, with majorities in both the House and Senate, set out to clean up the Trump administration\u2019s disjointed handling of the pandemic \u2014 beginning with a nearly $2 trillion recovery package.<\/p>\n
Month by month, with no effective pushback from Biden and Democrats, voters came to place more blame on the new administration for a crisis that started under the GOP\u2019s watch. Republicans won back the House majority in 2022, this time by a narrow four-seat margin, but they have since used that power to boost Trump at almost every turn.<\/p>\n
Pelosi resigned from leadership and returned to life in the rank-and-file, working across the street in a House office building for the first time since 2001.<\/p>\n
Pelosi will attend the Democratic National Convention this month in Chicago with no real responsibilities \u2014 as leader of her caucus she was the co-chair for the previous five conventions \u2014 other than a likely speaking role.<\/p>\n
Her main political role these days is still raising money and giving advice when asked by others. No speaker in modern times has left the post and stuck around this long in office, but Pelosi rather enjoys the freedom and dispensing wisdom that sounds like a mix of a crime boss and local party activist.<\/p>\n
For dealing with Republicans who made fun of the attack on her husband, she said: \u201cTreat everyone as a friend but know who your friends are.\u201d<\/p>\n
But a few unnamed GOP lawmakers received the bluntest of messages. \u201cSome of them,\u201d Pelosi said she replied to them, \u201cI just say: \u2018We\u2019re out to get you, you\u2019re dead.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
When it comes to her discussions with Biden, she returned to a motto that former California governor Jerry Brown taught her when she chaired the state Democratic Party in the early 1980s: \u201cThose who talk don\u2019t know and those who know don\u2019t talk.\u201d<\/p>\n
She believes Democrats have essentially missed their window to sell the legislative accomplishments, such as the semiconductor plan and the infrastructure bill, ahead of the November elections.<\/p>\n
She is advising the Harris campaign team to focus on future proposals such as the expanded child tax credit that expired.<\/p>\n
\u201cReally, if I could do one thing, it would be child care. It\u2019ll make the biggest difference in our economy,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Her \u201cwhy,\u201d at least through November, is squarely on defeating Trump, whom she called \u201cunpatriotic\u201d and whom she compared to fascist regimes for his attempts to destroy faith in independent media.<\/p>\n
She rejected the thoughts from book reviewers that her book title was meant as a tweak on Trump\u2019s original best-selling memoir in the 1980s, \u201cThe Art of the Deal.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNothing that I do has anything to do with him, except his downfall,\u201d Pelosi said.<\/p>\n
She treasures some friendships with GOP elder statesmen. George W. Bush is a legitimate friend who hosted her at an event early last year, and Pelosi still hasn\u2019t cooked the steaks that Elizabeth Dole sent her three years ago after she visited Bob Dole before he died.<\/p>\n
But she\u2019s got no time for new friendships with younger Republicans who like Trump. Pelosi recalled several of the first-term Republicans from New York asking her to attend events tied to their shared Italian heritage.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you\u2019re not there, maybe I\u2019ll come,\u201d Pelosi responded to the crew, several of whom are in swing districts that will determine the majority.<\/p>\n
She declined their pleas.<\/p>\n
\u201cI do not like you. I\u2019m out to get you, I\u2019m out to get you,\u201d she said. \u201cYour defeat is my goal.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Late one night in July 2022 when she was House speaker, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) got word that House Republicans had pulled support for a bipartisan bill to reenergize America\u2019s semiconductor industry. Some liberal Democrats were also squeamish about providing corporate welfare, so some of her advisers suggested pulling the bill from the next day\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":7675,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7674","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7674","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7674"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7674\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7675"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}