Pelosi engineers a House Democratic comeback
WASHINGTON — After a post-election caucus meeting in 2010, a despondent House Democrat angrily labeled Nancy Pelosi “the face that defeated us.”
The first woman ever to serve as speaker, Pelosi had overseen a historic 63-seat loss amid a barrage of Republican ads that pilloried her as a San Francisco liberal and lambasted the 2010 Affordable Care Act.
Yet Pelosi refused to step aside and continued leading Democrats, even after coming up short in three more elections, and late Tuesday night she marched on stage with a new label: the face of victory.
On a night when Democrats suffered losses in the Senate and in some marquee governor’s races, Pelosi’s House Democrats delivered a resounding midterm triumph that hands them the majority and all the power that entails. They can set the agenda through their committee chairmen and investigate President Trump and his administration.
Nothing becomes law, for the next two years, unless they support it.
“Remember this feeling, know the power to win,” Pelosi told a cheering crowd at a Capitol Hill hotel ballroom.
At 78, she is poised to once again make history. Should she overcome some internal opposition, Pelosi will become the first person to return to the speaker’s post since Sam Rayburn, D-Texas, in 1955. Moreover, no one has ever gone eight years between losing and then reclaiming that coveted gavel.
‘I know the ropes’: Pelosi makes her case for leader as Democrats chase House majority
Democrats will formally nominate their candidate for speaker after Thanksgiving so Pelosi will spend the next few weeks trying to firm up her support and chart a course for how she would lead the newly empowered Democrats in their confrontations with Trump.