SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
Among the many Democratic Party insiders who publicly or privately urged Joe Biden to reconsider running for president again, one played an outsized role.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "MORNING JOE")
NANCY PELOSI: It's up to the president to decide if he is going to run. We're all encouraging him to make that decision because time is running short.
DETROW: 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.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: Nothing can come in the way of saving our democracy. That includes personal ambition.
DETROW: 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. NPR political correspondent Susan Davis has followed Pelosi's career. Hey, Sue.
SUSAN DAVIS, BYLINE: Hey there.
DETROW: So regardless of the exact details of who Pelosi called when, 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.
DAVIS: 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 talked to lawmakers on the Hill, certainly donors, the sense of going to her and say, what do you think this means? Can he still win? I'm worried about my district. All those - what they call front-line Democrats, the ones in the swing seats that will help determine the majority next year, she's the first point person you call to get political advice. I think the one thing that's not disputed about Nancy Pelosi is she has 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's 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.
DETROW: Right. 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?
DAVIS: 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 a 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 sort of heard all over Washington. 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 Biden doesn't really share at least with any living, currently serving Democrats in Congress.
DETROW: I think with a lot of political leaders, you see them gradually lose power. I think President Biden is a pretty prominent example of 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. 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?
DAVIS: 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.
DETROW: 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.
DAVIS: Truly.
DETROW: She doesn't need to be charismatic on television. And that's that's kind of unique in national politics in 2024.
DAVIS: 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 of Pelosi still being relevant on the Hill and now having the first multiracial female candidate for president.
DETROW: Any sense in terms of what comes next if Harris wins in November? Harris, like Pelosi, comes from California politics, 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 back-bencher but clearly not in Congress?
DAVIS: 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?
DETROW: Political correspondent Susan Davis. Thank you so much.
DAVIS: You're welcome. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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