An iron fist in a Gucci glove

A friend remarked to me yesterday that there needs to be a major biography of Nancy Pelosi, one of the most important figures in American political history. (It’s unfortunate that Robert Caro doesn’t work more quickly.) And this is evident even though she’s no longer the formal leader of the House Democrats:

Joe Biden’s decision to drop out of the presidential race and endorse his vice president, Kamala Harris, to replace him is, from one angle, the final political act of an octogenarian who realizes that his power is coming to an end and who is sagely passing the torch to a younger politician in a last-ditch effort to save his party and his country from authoritarian defeat. But from another vantage point, the real story is one of a different octogenarian—one who has wielded power more effectively than just about any politician in the past half-century—who used her decades of accrued experience and authority to do what no one else apparently could: get a dug-in presidential candidate to drop out and give his party a fighting chance.

Both stories are real. But one seems much closer to the behind-the-scenes reality of Biden’s decision. The truth is: California Rep. Nancy Pelosi likes to win. And more than nearly any other Democrat in my lifetime, she knows how to. If Democrats do pull off a victory in November, it will be in large part because of her unsparing refusal to give into what felt like inevitable defeat.

Biden absolutely deserves praise and thanks for his decision to pull out of the 2024 race. Ceding power (even the potential for power) is never easy, and by all accounts he has been deeply resistant to dropping out. Now that he has, the Democratic Party is in largely uncharted waters. Biden has thrown his support behind Harris, and many other leading Democrats seem to be doing the same. Even if Harris swiftly seals up the nomination, there’s little modern precedent for a new candidate taking over the reins of a presidential campaign from a standstill with only a few months to go.

What is clear is that the candidate is not going to be Biden. And that’s at least in part because Pelosi looked at the polls, saw no path to victory, and understood that the best way to get through to Biden was to confront the president in private, while remaining respectfully assertive in public. And it seems to have worked.

On a call with Biden, Pelosi laid out all the ways in which the numbers didn’t cut in his favor, and the president reportedly told Pelosi that he was seeing polling data suggesting he could still win. “Put Donilon on the phone,” Pelosi is said to have told the president, asking for Biden adviser Mike Donilon. “Show me what polls.”

According to what a Pelosi ally told Politico, she did not want to publicly demand Biden resign but in private was willing to “do everything in her power to make sure it happens”—including telling the president what so many of his advisers, family members, and trusted confidants apparently would not.

Politico once aptly described Pelosi as “an iron fist in a Gucci glove,” and rarely has her handiwork been so apparent. While she remained outwardly supportive of the president, she also simply ignored his repeated statements that he wasn’t dropping out of the race, keeping the door open and the pressure on for him to drop out. “I mean, if the Lord Almighty came down and said, ‘Joe, get out of the race,’ I’d get out of the race,” Biden told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos in early July. “The Lord Almighty’s not coming down.” But Pelosi did. Just a few days later, she went on MSNBC and, in a move familiar to any child of a parent skilled in a raised-eyebrow “It’s up to you” (translation: Don’t you dare), said, “It’s up to the president to decide if he’s going to run”—technically endorsing the idea that the decision was Biden’s alone, while also undermining any suggestion that it had really been made.

We’re unlikely to see her likes again for a while.