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Nancy Pelosi is finally making clear her role in the pressure campaign which led to Joe Biden making the painful, personal decision to step down as the Democratic Party’s 2024 candidate.
The former House speaker sat down with The New Yorker for an interview which published on Thursday; in it, she outlined a bleak outlook for the Biden campaign following the president’s concerning appearance at June’s presidential debate in Atlanta.
Pelosi told David Remnick that she didn’t see a path to victory for the incumbent president after he appeared lost onstage at points and was unable to complete his thoughts, trailing off before declaring, “...anyway” or coming to an incoherent stop.
“He felt great. And I had confidence in him,” Pelosi said of Biden before the debate. “And then that happened, and I think everybody was stunned. It was stunning.”
She went on to outline how she saw the race after the debate, and in doing so offered a frank characterization of the Biden campaign apparatus: “I’ve never been that impressed with his political operation.”
“They won the White House. Bravo,” the former speaker quipped. “But my concern was: this ain’t happening, and we have to make a decision for this to happen. The president has to make the decision for that to happen.”
For weeks, Pelosi has sought to downplay her involvement in the behind-the-scenes conversations which finally led to Biden’s announcement that he would step down on July 21. She did so this past weekend, in an interview on CBS Sunday Morning, insisting that she did not make a single call concerning her worries about the president.
But it was clear in her remarks to Remnick that she was providing herself with careful cover: “I never called one person, but people were calling me saying that there was a challenge there,” Pelosi explained.
“I never made one call. They said I was burning up the lines, I was talking to Chuck [Schumer]. I didn’t talk to Chuck at all,” she said. But as more and more House members came to her with concerns, she said she came to the conclusion that Biden needed to step aside for the good of the party.
The one-time House Democratic leader is set to go down as one of the most effective political operatives in the modern history of the United States. Her successful maneuvering on a wide range of issues over the course of her career, from the passage of the Affordable Care Act to Biden’s withdrawal and, most recently, the selection of Tim Walz as Kamala Harris’s running mate, sets her aside as a Democrat whom few others can say they had more of a hand guiding the future of the party, or even the country.
She cleanly overshadowed her contemporaries, most notably former House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy, who succeeded her as speaker when the lower chamber changed hands but lasted less than a year into the job, falling to a rebellion led by members of his own party.
But despite her years-long relationship with President Joe Biden, Pelosi seemed uncertain that her friendship with him would survive her role in discussions aimed around convincing him to step aside. The president is said to have personally believed he deserved a second term — and his party’s loyalty — given the accomplishments he notched over four years in the White House and many more in Congress.
In her interview with CBS, Pelosi did not deny an assertion that the president was “furious” with her.
“I think he’s in a good [mental] state. I mean, I think he did a remarkable thing, bringing home all these prisoners [from Russia]. Oh, my God, that was so masterful. . . . But my understanding is that he’s good,” she told Remnick.
Asked if she was worried about losing her friendship with the president, she answered: “I lose sleep on it, yeah.”
