(New York) Unfortunately, Nancy Pelosi’s memoir, due out Tuesday, will be missing a fascinating chapter. Entitled The Art of Power (The Art of Power), the 352-page book will not contain a word about the former Speaker of the House of Representatives’ role in Joe Biden’s historic withdrawal from the race for the White House.
And yet it was a crucial role, by most reliable accounts. And it perfectly illustrates how the 84-year-old wielded power in a political career she embarked on after giving birth to and raising five children.
“Nancy made it clear to them that this could be done softly or hard. She gave them three weeks for the soft method. Hard method was coming,” one Democrat told the Politico news site the day after the octogenarian president withdrew.
Of course, Nancy Pelosi is not the only prominent Democrat who put direct or indirect pressure on Joe Biden after the June 27 debate. Barack Obama was also part of the group. But his complicated relationship with his former vice president did not allow him to call him to push him out.
The San Francisco representative has made at least three phone calls to the White House chief, who respects her as a contemporary and bearer of his own political legacy. The last of those calls came the day before the announcement that transformed the 2024 presidential campaign and gave Kamala Harris the chance to become the first female president of the United States.
But what did Nancy Pelosi, the first woman to hold the position of Speaker of the House, say to Joe Biden?
” I love her so much “
Journalist Lesley Stahl asked the woman the question during an interview broadcast Sunday on the CBS program 60 Minuteson the eve of the release of The Art of Power. A revealing exchange followed.
“I have never publicly shared the conversations I had with the President of the United States,” Pelosi responded.
— They say he’s furious with you, is that true?
— He knows that I love him very much.
— I understand that you don’t want to take responsibility for this. But it has been reported that you have been leading a pressure campaign.
— No, I didn’t lead any pressure campaign. Let me tell you what I didn’t do. I didn’t call anyone. I can always tell him, ‘I didn’t call anyone.'”
But several House Democrats spoke to Pelosi, seeing her as the only person who could influence the president. And Pelosi listened, as she did from 2002 to 2022 as House Democratic leader before returning to being a representative.
She took notes on her colleagues’ internal polling, as well as their concerns about the impact of the president’s candidacy on their chances of reelection. And she made a statement that rattled the White House on Joe Biden’s favorite morning show, Morning Joeon MSNBC.
“It’s up to the president to decide whether he’s going to run. We all encourage him to make that decision. Because time is running out,” she said on July 10.
The statement was all the more remarkable given that two days earlier, Joe Biden had sent a near-furious letter to Democratic congressmen repeating his determination to stay in the race.
On July 13, the assassination attempt on Donald Trump seemed to offer Joe Biden a reprieve. But three days later, California Democratic Representative Adam Schiff, a close associate of Nancy Pelosi, reignited the pressure campaign by declaring that Democrats risked losing everything if Joe Biden stayed in the race: the White House, the Senate and the House.
Change of tone
Nancy Pelosi was even more direct with Joe Biden in her second phone call with him. According to some media reports, the president first insisted that he had polls that led him to believe that all was not lost yet.
That’s when the daughter of former Baltimore Mayor Thomas D’Alesandro asked Biden’s right-hand man, Mike Donilon, to join the call. And she rattled off all the internal polling she’d been jotting down. Her message: The president will lose, and he’ll take House Democrats down with him.
After that call, Pelosi told colleagues that Joe Biden might soon be convinced to drop out of the race. The missing chapter of her memoir might have told us that her final call to the president was the final straw.
Like Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi had wanted an open convention to replace Joe Biden at the head of the Democratic ticket, if only to better establish the legitimacy of the probable winner, Kamala Harris.
But, seeing the Democratic Party’s irrefutable desire to unite around the vice president, she quickly gave her support – with “immense pride and boundless optimism.”
“My enthusiastic support for Kamala Harris for president is official, personal and political,” she added, emphasizing the last word to signify that victory remained THE priority for her.
Pelosi, pure and simple.
The Art of Power will include chapters on what Barack Obama and Joe Biden owe him for their greatest achievements (in Madam Speakerher biography of Nancy Pelosi, journalist Susan Page says that Obamacare might as well be called Pelosicare, given the former House Speaker’s crucial role in getting the landmark bill passed by Congress.