Can we all admit there was something supremely gratifying about watching Nancy Pelosi work over the last few weeks?
As concerns mounted among Democrats about President Biden’s mental fitness and his disastrous debate performance and as Mr. Biden responded by digging in his heels, it was the 84-year-old Ms. Pelosi — a fellow octogenarian, no longer in charge yet as shrewd and formidable an operator as ever — who took those concerns and helped organize them into a sustained pressure campaign.
When Mr. Biden said he absolutely wouldn’t drop out, Ms. Pelosi went on his favorite TV show to say he needed to make a decision “because time is running short.” When the president told her during a phone call that polling data suggested he could still win, she challenged him: “Put Donilon on the phone,” Ms. Pelosi is said to have demanded of the president, asking for one of Biden’s advisers. “Show me what polls.”
Even as Mr. Biden was becoming “increasingly resentful” of what he viewed as the “orchestrated campaign” against him, as The Times reported, she kept working methodically behind the scenes, talking to lawmakers, members of her old leadership team and her large network of donors, who slowly and steadily kept piling on. Before Mr. Biden ultimately threw in the towel last weekend, his team was bracing for what she might do next, Politico reported, with a quote that made this grandmother of 10 sound a bit like Don Corleone.
“Nancy made clear that they could do this the easy way or the hard way,” a Democrat familiar with the conversations told the publication. “She gave them three weeks of the easy way. It was about to be the hard way.” As one Democratic strategist told The Hill, referencing the president’s statement that it would take “the Lord Almighty” to make him withdraw his re-election bid: “Once she weighs in, it’s done. He wanted the Lord Almighty. Well, this is the Lord Almighty.”
Nancy Pelosi with the iron fist!
We — myself very much included — have spent years tying ourselves in knots over the fraught question of the right way to be a woman in power. Women have to be more humble. Female leaders have to work differently to build consensus. Women have to be tough but also warm, etc., etc., etc.