A year after her speakership, Nancy Pelosi's influence remains strong

Among the many Democratic Party insiders who publicly or privately urged President Joe Biden to reconsider running for reelection, one played an outsized role: Nancy Pelosi.

Earlier this month, the former speaker of the House went on MSNBC's Morning Joe (a show Biden is known to watch regularly) and said: "It's up to the president to decide if he's going to run. We're all encouraging him to make that decision because time is running short."

That got a lot of attention, because at that point, Biden had said repeatedly he had already made a decision — to stay in the race.

With some internal polling showing that Biden was losing ground in crucial swing states, Pelosi reportedly spoke with fellow members of Congress, major donors and, later, the president himself. Biden eventually got the message.

Pelosi is 84 years old — older than Biden — and no longer in House leadership. Yet this episode proves she remains a highly effective leader within the Democratic Party.

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A historic career

Before Pelosi's time on Capitol Hill, she was a Democratic National Committee member working in state politics. That experience has proven critical to her role in the Democratic presidential campaign this year, says NPR political correspondent Susan Davis:

"She is uniquely aware of how the nominating process works and what the calendar looks like, and the understanding that if Democrats were going to change their ticket, it had to happen prior to the convention. Because once you nominate someone, it gets a lot more complicated to change the ticket after that."

First elected as House speaker in 2007, Pelosi was the first woman to hold the title. Part of her success, Davis says, has been due to her political instincts and ability to get policy passed.

As a leader of the Democrats, Davis says that Pelosi is willing to face criticism if it helps other members of the party: "If a Democrat in a vulnerable race had to say, 'I'm not going to support Nancy Pelosi's agenda' to win, Nancy Pelosi would sort of nod and wink and say, 'Run on what you need to run on.'"

That's because to Pelosi, it's always about the end result.

"I think she would argue...somebody has to be willing to do the unpopular things to get things done. And that takes leadership," Davis says.

"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."

Pelosi's new role in politics

Despite stepping down from Congressional leadership in 2023, Pelosi's influence in Washington hasn't gone away.

Now, Davis says, she works behind the scenes.

"She has, by all accounts, 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," Davis says. "I don't think she's wanted to be seen as the mom constantly popping her head in the door to see if the kids are doing OK."

Pelosi has said she wants to support the next generation of leaders — though we're yet to see how she'll influence politics if Vice President Kamala Harris wins the presidency in November.

"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," Davis says. "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."

Pelosi is not retiring just yet – she's running for another term this year. And in a world where slim majorities in Congress are the norm, Davis wonders if a Harris administration would make a special effort to reach out to her.

"Pelosi is still someone that President Biden relied on to get his agenda passed in the first two years of his term. And someone that I think a president like Kamala Harris would want to rely on to help get whatever her agenda might be passed."