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When Governor Gavin Newsom of California took to the floor of the United Center to cast his state’s 482 votes for Kamala Harris, he dubbed his state “the great state of Nancy Pelosi”. The pint-sized Italian-American grandmother, wearing her signature pearl necklace, stood beside him all the while, beaming with pride.
And when President Joe Biden delivered his farewell address to the convention on Monday evening, Pelosi held a sign aloft saying “We Love Joe.”
The two moments were bizarrely poetic, given the fact that Pelosi helped orchestrate Biden’s exit from the top of the ticket.
That move led to her fellow Californian, Harris, becoming the nominee — and also played a role in Harris selecting her running mate Tim Walz.
On Wednesday evening, Pelosi took the convention stage, where she solidified her status as the elder stateswoman and matriarch of the Democratic Party. She opened her speech with the same slogan on those signs, saying: “Thank you, Joe.”
Barack Obama may have helped shove Biden off the stage, too, and he may have mentored Harris. Jaime Harrison might be the chairman of the committee, and Hakeem Jeffries might have Pelosi’s old title as Democratic leader in the House. But make no mistake: Pelosi is still the one who runs the party and makes the hard decisions.
That doesn’t mean that people are dwelling on it, however.
“Biden made the decision [to stand aside], so I'm proud of that,” Representative Jan Schakowsky told The Independent.
“I think one thing we've seen this week is all that other s**t’s behind us,” one Democratic strategist said,noting how Biden had gotten onboard with the Harris-Walz plan. “He came and gave what I think was the most full-throated endorsement of her the other night that he possibly could.”
Representative Jamie Raskin, a protege of Pelosi, told The Independent that the party is “united” and “focused on victory”.
But while nobody will speak it, Pelosi is the reason behind the good vibes in Chicago. Indeed, in the promotion for her book The Art of Power, Pelosi has not minced words about how Biden faced a campaign headed for disaster and risked losing to Donald Trump.
Pelosi occupies a unique role in the party now. Unburdened by any official title save her honorary speaker emerita one, she no longer risks rupturing her caucus when she makes statements.
But her years of leading the House Democrats under two Democratic presidents and passing their major legislative priorities as well as standing firmly against Trump gives her unique credibility.
Pelosi has said that she “did not call one person” to push out Biden. That may or not be true. But someone like Pelosi, a respected leader with a record of accomplishment unparalleled by any living Democrat, would not need to make phone calls to get her will done.
Throughout much of the 2010s, she occupied a peculiar role wherein she would shoulder the blame for any bad things that happened to Democrats. She became a Republican punching-bag whom they would regularly tie to vulnerable Democrats like Walz, a rural frontline Democrat.
But she never seemed to mind. Even though she is a fan of the San Francisco 49ers, she clearly abides by former Oakland Raiders coach Al Davis’s mantra of “Just win, baby.” In other words: Once the election is over, everything will be sorted out. Pelosi is willing to absorb blows — including sacrificing her decades-long friendship with Biden — in the name of making sure that Democrats defeated Trump, her own personal Public Enemy Number One.
Indeed, earlier this week on CNN, Pelosi was asked about her supposed feud with Biden, to which she replied, “Sometimes you just have to take a punch for the children.” Not long afterwards, she asked, in the style of many others at the DNC this week: “Why are we even talking about it?”
For years, Pelosi hoped that Trump would not be the bookend to her legacy. But the greatest whip in the Democratic Party sees 2024 for as her final and most important vote count: To defeat the man she considers the most dangerous threat to democracy and bequeath her title as the most powerful woman in American politics to Harris.
