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      'This may be the last time': Nancy Pelosi at what she suggests is her final press conference – video

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      ‘This may be the last time I speak to you this way,’ said Nancy Pelosi in what she suggested could be her final press conference. The former Democrat house speaker defended her record in office, noting the passing of the Affordable Care Act as one of her greatest achievements. ‘Nothing in any of the years that I was there compares to the Affordable Care Act,’ Pelosi told reporters, adding: ‘It is a values issues for our country, so that for me was the highlight.’
      Pelosi announced in November that she would be stepping down as house speaker, ending a historic run as the first woman in the position. The California Democrat held the post for nearly two decades

      Nancy Pelosi tells of ‘proud’ record as speaker in likely final press conference – live More

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      ‘It’s been very dark for all of us’: film-maker Alexandra Pelosi on a family on America’s political frontline

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      Interview‘It’s been very dark for all of us’: film-maker Alexandra Pelosi on a family on America’s political frontlineDavid Smith in Washington With her father recovering from a brutal hammer attack, the director’s latest film shows her mother Nancy Pelosi resisting the January 6 insurrectionAlexandra Pelosi is at home in New York, preparing a birthday party for her 15-year-old son, and pops up on Zoom beside a sign that says: “Don’t work for assholes. Don’t work with assholes.” When our interview begins with the most unimaginative of queries – “How are you?” – she is in no mood for casual conversation.Pelosi in the House: documentary captures speaker’s January 6 struggleRead more“How am I supposed to answer that question?” the fast-talking film-maker bats back. “Look, I don’t know how you do polite small talk because I’ve just been through basically like both of my parents’ funerals.”To be clear, neither of Alexandra’s parents is dead. Her father Paul Pelosi, 82, is undergoing a slow and painful recovery from a hammer attack in late October by a home intruder. Her mother Nancy Pelosi, also 82, last month announced her retirement as Democratic leader in the House of Representatives, assured of a place in history as the first female speaker.Alexandra, 52, recalls that, when her father emerged from intensive care, his house looked like a funeral home because so many well-wishers sent flowers. “I was reading the notes from his friends and I was like, this is great, ’cos you get to go to your own funeral, ’cos you get to see what people say about you when you die. I’m putting a good spin on it, trying to cheer him up.”Then she went to Washington for her mother’s long goodbye. “If you’re in politics and you step down, it’s like going to your own funeral because you get to read your own obituary. Essentially it’s like I’ve read both of my parents’ obituaries and now I have to keep living with two living people. That’s surreal.”The pitiless assault on Paul Pelosi was one of the most disturbing examples yet of America’s increasingly coarse, polarised and violent political culture. He has told how he was sleeping when a man he had never seen before entered his bedroom looking for Nancy, who was in Washington at the time.Officers responding to Paul’s 911 call found him and David DePape, 42, fighting over a hammer, according to a federal indictment. An officer ordered DePape to drop the hammer but he responded, “ummm nope,” before forcefully swinging it at Paul, who was treated at a hospital for a fractured skull.DePape last month pleaded not guilty to federal charges of attempting to kidnap a federal official and assaulting a federal official’s family member. Paul, wearing a hat and glove on one hand, made his first public appearance since the assault at the recent Kennedy Center Honors in Washington.“Wasn’t that amazing?” asks Alexandra, who has been struggling to sleep and has had nightmares about the incident. “Come on, you can’t be a bitter old journalist! I think every member of our family cried when they saw that because that’s the first time he left the house. That was a nice 10 seconds of his life but he has to live with traumatic brain injury for the rest of his life and he’s 82. If it could’ve been me, I would have loved to have been in his place.”She reflects: “It’s been very dark for all of us. We all process it differently. I’ve been very dark because the minute it happened I got on a plane with my mom and went to San Francisco. We sat in the ICU for a week and I was very upset because my mother loves to tell the story that, when I was 16, she came to me and said, ‘Mommy has the chance to run for Congress and I will only do it if you give me your permission but I’d have to be gone three nights a week.’ I was like, ‘Mom, get a life!’“She loves that story and so then we were sitting in the ICU 35 years later and I was like, ‘If I had known that this is where it was going to end, I never would have given you my blessing that day 35 years ago.’ But my dad was like, you can’t say that because it’s not fair to erase her career just because of this; you have to say, if you came to me today, I would not give you my permission because of how toxic the social media environment is.”Alexandra’s son, Paul, is named after her father and worships him. He was with her at the US Capitol when it came under attack from a mob of Donald Trump supporters on 6 January 2021. “He was asking me that day, ‘Mom, why do all these people want to kill MiMi?’ I couldn’t come up with an answer. Because of the Affordable Care Act? I don’t know.“I know that if you watch Fox News, you hate Nancy Pelosi because they’ve programmed you to hate Nancy Pelosi and, if I watched Fox News, I would hate Nancy Pelosi too. But I don’t know how it gets from that to, ‘I want to break into her house and try and kill someone in her family.’ That’s a leap and so it’s been a lot for my teenagers to try and process that.”The Virginia governor, Glenn Youngkin, and Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake made fun of it while Trump’s son, Don Jr. retweeted a “Paul Pelosi Halloween costume” featuring a hammer.Alexandra, who had to clean up the mess and has photos of her father’s bloody pyjamas on her phone, comments: “I can’t see how the governor of Virginia can make jokes about it or the wannabe governor of Arizona can make jokes about it and then how elected members of Congress can tweet these insane Pizzagate-style conspiracies. That’s unforgivable. That’s who I’ll never forgive. I’m trying to make peace with that.”Both her parents feature in her latest film, her 14th documentary for HBO, broadcast on Tuesday. Pelosi in the House is shot in a cinéma vérité style across three decades with plenty of shots of Nancy’s back as she strides through the corridors of power. At one point she is seen putting Vice-President Mike Pence on speakerphone while doing household chores.Alexandra admits: “She never gave me permission. She has not signed a release. She has not seen the film. She does not know what this is. I don’t know if she’s ever going to watch it.” Indeed, Alexandra could never get her mother to sit down for an in-depth interview. “This is watching her work because Nancy Pelosi is her job. The only way to understand her is to watch her work so the only way I could explain her is watching her work. But if I tried to talk to her or ask a question, it just wouldn’t work. She just didn’t play ball with me. That’s not what she does. ”The documentary sometimes revels in the quotidian but, when it arrives at January 6, moves to a different plane. Watching on TV as Trump delivers an incendiary speech urging his supporters to “fight like hell” to overturn his election defeat, Nancy vows to “punch him out” if he sets foot in the US Capitol, her sacred ground.Alexandra recalls: “She was protecting her turf. It was the House of Pelosi and they broke into her house and tried to kill all of her family members because the caucus is her family. Nancy Pelosi has two families. She has us, her children and grandchildren, then she has her political family, the members, the caucus.”Whipped up into a frenzy, the mob marched on the Capitol. Alexandra’s husband, the Dutch TV journalist Michiel Vos, was outside reporting the drama; she and her teenage son were inside, watching with alarm. “I was looking out the window: ‘Oh, look at those protesters out there.’ I’m trying to get her [Nancy’s] attention because she’s very laser-focused. Then my son kept saying like, ‘What if they stormed the Capitol?’“At some point the security came over and said we’re leaving. They [the mob] had already broken the window to come in. The security camera shows that the protesters were two minutes from us but we found out that after. At the time we did not know how close they came so it wasn’t as scary as it seemed.”Nor did the threat come as a complete surprise. “The Republicans have spent hundreds of millions of dollars demonising her and turning her into a target. The Capitol police have protected her for decades. There was a pig’s head on her doorstep in San Francisco a few days before that attack. It’s not as if this all came completely out of the blue.”Alexandra accompanied her mother into the back of SUV that sped them away to safety. The speaker, full of cold fury, and other congressional leaders gathered at a military base, working the phones to demand that order be restored so they could certify Joe Biden’s election victory.Alexandra melted into the background and filmed for posterity. Some of the footage made its way into the House’s January 6 committee hearings. “It’s like a soccer player. What do you do when you put a ball in front of me? I’m going to kick it. I knew my job was to kick the ball.”The rioters, meanwhile, had overrun the Capitol and were ransacking the speaker’s office. Among the most haunting footage from that day is the sound of one demanding, “Where’s Nancy?” Subsequently Stewart Rhodes, founder of the far-right Oath Keepers, reportedly said he wanted to hang Nancy “from the lamp-post”.Jokes about Paul Pelosi aren’t just in bad taste. They normalize political violence | Arwa MahdawiRead moreAlexandra reflects: “Stewart Rhodes was prosecuted so my son comes down for breakfast the other day and he’s like, ‘Hey, did you see that this guy was found guilty? He said he wanted to hang Nancy Pelosi from a lamp-post. Why did he want to hang Nancy Pelosi from a lamp-post?’ I don’t know. I still haven’t been able to come up with a good answer for Nancy Pelosi’s grandchildren about why people want to hang her from a lamp-post.”Such unanswerables underline that it has been a bruising couple of months. But a trip to Washington boosted Alexandra’s spirits. First, she was reunited with her “old friend” former president George W Bush – a relationship that bemuses her liberal friends. “It’s renewing my faith in humanity because I know there’s hope that the Republican party does have a life after Donald Trump and then I can live in America and we can all live happily ever after.”Then she attended a state dinner at the White House, sitting across from Biden and next to the guest of honour, the French president, Emmanuel Macron. “Let’s face it, I’m the least interesting person at the table so it’s my job to entertain them.” She began with a mother-in-law joke for Macron’s benefit: “When I met my husband’s mom, the first thing she said to me was, ‘Why can’t you be French?’”Now, in another welcome diversion from her parents’ “funerals”, she has to get ready for her younger son’s birthday party and so ends the interview with a final plea. “Be nice,” she says mischievously. “Haven’t the Pelosis suffered enough? I don’t want to retraumatise my family when they read the Guardian. That’s all.”TopicsDocumentary filmsNancy PelosiUS politicsinterviewsReuse this content More

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      Pelosi in the House: documentary captures speaker’s January 6 struggle

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      Pelosi in the House: documentary captures speaker’s January 6 struggle Film by her daughter, Alexandra Pelosi, captures how Nancy Pelosi fought to preserve democracy in the dramatic hours of the Capitol attackThe struggle of Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House of Representatives, to preserve American democracy in the dramatic hours of the January 6 attack are captured in a new documentary film shot by her daughter.Pelosi is seen watching on TV Donald Trump’s incendiary speech to his supporters, getting rushed out of the US Capitol building and making calls to Vice-President Mike Pence and other officials from the Fort McNair military base, where congressional leaders took refuge from the mob.Despite the chaos and confusion, she is immediately clear that Trump is responsible for instigating what she describes as an “insurrection”.The blow-by-blow reconstruction of the assault on democracy is contained in Pelosi in the House, produced and directed by the speaker’s daughter, film-maker Alexandra Pelosi, broadcast on HBO on Tuesday. Some of the behind-the-scenes footage was seen in edited form during the House January 6 committee hearings.Early in the day Pelosi is in her office, wearing a face mask and adjusting her hair, as three TV screens show Trump whipping up his supporters at the Ellipse and vowing never to concede the 2020 presidential election. She tells her staff with a laugh: “Tell him if he comes here, we’re going to the White House.”Watching through a window, Alexandra’s teenage son, Paul, spots a flag-waving mob gathering ominously outside the US Capitol. Pelosi’s chief of staff, Terri McCullough, reports that the Secret Service have dissuaded Trump from coming to the Capitol because they would not have the resources to protect him.Pelosi replies defiantly: “If he comes, I’m going to punch him out. I’ve been waiting for this. For trespassing on the Capitol grounds, I’m going to punch him out and I’m going to go to jail, and I’m going to be happy.”Members of Congress adjourn to consider objections to the 2020 election results. A car has “Trump” and “Pelosi is Satan” signs on its windscreen. The chanting, horn-blowing mob attacks police, smashes windows and force its way into the building, shouting: “This is our house!”Pelosi escapes with just two minutes to spare. At 2.15pm she is escorted to safety down a staircase. She asks: “Are they calling the national guard?” A woman replies: “Yes. Yes, ma’am.”Hastening through a tunnel, she asks: “Did you reach McConnell?” – a reference to the then Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell. Someone says: “We did.” Pelosi: “And will they call the national guard?” Reply: “That’s correct.”Upstairs, the rioters are demanding to know where votes are counted. Walking through another corridor with aides around her, Pelosi evidently realises what a perilous moment this is for democracy. She says: “If they stop the proceedings, they will have succeeded in stopping the validation of the president of the United States. If they stop the proceedings, we will have totally failed.”She is then seen on a phone, telling an unidentified person: “We have got to finish the proceedings or else they will have a complete victory.”Both Pelosi and her daughter climb into the back of a black SUV so they can be taken to safety. Upstairs, her office is being ransacked by Trump supporters. One thinks he has found Pelosi’s laptop. Another asks: “You want Nancy’s pink boxing gloves?” Someone shouts with primal rage: “Fuck Nancy Pelosi!”Sitting in the moving vehicle, the speaker is livid at the disruption of Congress’s sacred duty. “So what’s the prospect? We’re gonna stay here all day, for the rest of our lives, or what? We’re here until what, until the national guard decides to come and get rid of these people?”By now the insurrectionists are inside the Senate chamber. One demands: “Do you see Nancy Pelosi?” Another asks: “Where the fuck is Nancy?” Outside, a bearded man in a “Maga” cap picks up a phone and shouts: “Can I speak to Pelosi? Yeah, we’re coming, bitch.”Pelosi is seen entering the military base at Fort McNair. As Congressman James Clyburn looks on, she says: “There has to be some way we can maintain the sense that people have that there is some security, some confidence that government can function and that we can elect the president of the United States.”Chuck Schumer, then the Democratic minority leader in the Senate, informs Pelosi: “My wife just called watching TV. There are people with guns trying to get into the House chamber.”Pelosi had to leave the Capitol without her phone so is forced to borrow others’. Sitting and studying a photo on one phone, says: “Oh, one of them is in the president of the Senate’s seat.”Schumer notes that some senators are still in hiding and pleads by phone with Ryan McCarthy, the army secretary, to send in military personnel. Pelosi, watching the carnage on CNN, speaks to Ralph Northam, the governor of Virginia: “They’re just breaking windows. This is horrendous. And all at the instigation of the president of the United States.”She tells Schumer that Northam agreed to dispatch 200 state police and a national guard unit.At 3.30pm Pelosi and Schumer speak by phone to Jeffrey Rosen, the acting attorney general. Pelosi tells him: “Safety just transcends everything but the fact is, on any given day, they’re breaking the law in many different ways and, quite frankly, much of it at the instigation of the president of the United States.”Schumer adds sharply: “Why don’t you get the president to tell them to leave the Capitol, Mr Attorney General, in your law enforcement responsibility? A public statement they should all leave?”Rosen begins to say his team is “coordinating as quickly and as –” before getting cut off by Schumer, who demands: “No, no, no – please answer my question, answer my question!”Congressional leaders then have a call with the acting defence secretary, Christopher Miller. Pelosi says forcefully: “Just pretend for a moment it was the Pentagon or the White House or some other entity that was under siege. You can logistically get people there as you make the plan and you have some leadership of the national guard there they have not been given the authority to activate.”Then Pelosi speaks to Pence as he waits in a parking garage beneath the Capitol, where rioters chanted for him to be hanged.Taking a seat beside a plant and cabinet full of decorative plates, the speaker says she and other congressional leaders are OK, then asks: “How are you? Oh, my goodness, where are you? God bless you. But are you in a very safe –?”She says she has been told that it will “take days” to clear the Capitol and that Fort McNair has facilities for the House and Senate to meet, adding: “We’d rather go to the Capitol and do it there but it doesn’t seem to be safe.”Pelosi continues: “We’ve got a very bad report about the condition of the House floor, with defecation and all that kind of thing.”She is then seen using her teeth to help unwrap a beef jerky stick and eating while holding the phone in her right hand. She tells Pence: “I worry about you being in that Capitol room. Don’t let anybody know where you are.”Finally, Trump releases a video calling his supporters to go home, but Pelosi and Schumer are not impressed. She comments: “Insurrection. That’s a crime and he’s guilty of it.”By 5.45pm the security forces have regained control. Pence informs Pelosi and Schumer by phone that Congress will be able to reconvene. The backup plan of doing so at Fort McNair is therefore not necessary.Sitting in a vehicle heading back through darkened streets, Pelosi expresses her disgust towards Trump. “I just feel sick at what he did to the Capitol and to the country today. He’s got to pay a price for that.”Back inside the Capitol, Pelosi is informed that the sign outside her office has been taken. She responds phlegmatically: “They took the sign? We’ll get another.”Entering the office, she is warned that there is still a lot of broken glass. A gold framed mirror above the fireplace is smashed. She observes: “Boy, the staff looks scared. They’re traumatised.”The Senate reconvenes around 8pm and the House around 9pm. Pelosi watches on TV as Schumer compares the insurrection to the attack on Pearl Harbor as a “day of infamy”. At 3.48am on 7 January, Joe Biden’s election victory is ratified after all.At 9am Pelosi is in a car, telling Clyburn: “We have to stop this man, the insurrectionist in the White House.” Clyburn warns that invoking the 25th amendment would be a “complicated process” and there may not be enough time, “but there is enough time – and it’s rather simple – to tag him with the uniqueness of a second impeachment”.On 13 January, a week before he left office, the House voted to impeach Trump by a vote of 232-197 for incitement of insurrection. He was the first president in history to be impeached twice.TopicsNancy PelosiDocumentary filmsUS Capitol attackUS politicsDonald TrumpfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Congress expected to impose contract on US railroad workers to avert strike

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      Congress expected to impose contract on US railroad workers to avert strikeCiting ‘catastrophic’ risk to US economy, Nancy Pelosi announces impending vote to bind unions to September negotiations The US House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, has announced that her fellow members of Congress plan to vote this week on imposing a new contract for railroad workers to avert a looming labor strike.Pelosi made the announcement late on Monday afternoon just after Joe Biden called on Congress to intervene to prevent a strike, a possibility if an agreement between the freight rail industry and unions is not made by 9 December.How a potential US rail strike could affect the economyRead moreIn a statement referring to the president’s request, Pelosi said that Democrats were “reluctant to bypass” negotiations but “we must act to prevent a catastrophic nationwide rail strike, which would grind our economy to a halt”.The agreement that would be imposed if passed by both congressional chambers comes from negotiations that were made in September between the rail companies, several unions and the Biden administration. It would entail a 24% raise by 2024, $1,000 in annual bonuses and a cap on healthcare premiums.Four unions – including the largest rail union, the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers (Smart), which represents more than 28,000 rail workers – rejected the agreement and had been negotiating with rail companies over the last several weeks. Smart turned down the tentative deal with rail management on 21 November, inching closer to a potential strike in December.The dozen rail unions, including those who voted in favor of the September deal, agreed to strike if just one union rejects any agreement and takes the dispute to the picket line. The rail industry has estimated a strike would cost the economy $2bn a day as key ground transportation for goods and passengers would be halted.Congress has the ability to impose an agreement on to the rail workers to avert a strike, something Democrats have been holding off on doing to give more room for unions to negotiate with management.The deadlock between management and the unions is mostly over paid sick leave. The union argues that workers should get at least six days of paid sick leave. They are currently expected to use vacation time if they call out sick and are penalized if they take time off without using vacation days. The agreement Congress is considering does not include a sick leave provision.On Monday, Biden said that he was “a proud pro-labor president” but that the effects of a strike would be too severe on the US economy.“Where the economic impact of a shutdown would hurt millions of other working people and families – I believe Congress must use its powers to adopt this deal,” the president said in his statement. “Some in Congress want to modify the deal to either improve it for labor or for management. However well-intentioned, any changes would risk delay and a debilitating shutdown.”The Railroad Workers Union on Tuesday issued a statement responding to Biden, saying that the president “blew it”.“He had the opportunity to prove his labor-friendly pedigree to millions of workers by simply asking Congress for legislation to end the threat of a national strike on terms more favorable to workers,” the statement said.In her statement, Pelosi said that the House will take up the agreement “with no poison pills or changes to the negotiated terms” and will soon send it to the Senate if passed.TopicsUS unionsUS CongressRail industryNancy PelosiJoe BidenUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Who’s really in charge of the House of Representatives? Politics Weekly America

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      There was no red wave, but come January next year, the Republicans will officially be in control of the House of Representatives. What will they do? Who will be in charge? Will they hold together or fall apart?
      Jonathan Freedland puts these questions and more to Marianna Sotomayor of The Washington Post. The pair also discuss the legacy of the outgoing Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi

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      Archive: CBS News, CNN and CSPAN Listen to Susan Page look back at Nancy Pelosi’s career Send your questions and feedback to podcasts@theguardian.com Help support the Guardian by going to theguardian.com/supportpodcasts More

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      Nancy Pelosi: key moments from the Democrat's time as House speaker – video

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      THe US House of Representatives speaker, Nancy Pelosi, the first woman to hold that influential post, has announced she will be stepping down as the Democratic leader in the chamber after Republicans secured a narrow majority after the midterm elections. It marks the end of a historic leadership career highlighted by her ability to hold a fractious caucus together and challenge the world’s most powerful men – including the former president Donald Trump. Here is a look back at her long and defiant career More

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      What did Nancy Pelosi represent in US politics? | Moira Donegan

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      Nancy Pelosi, a hate figure to right and left, is a political virtuoso who defined her eraMoira DoneganTo Republicans, Pelosi has taken on a kind of mythic malice. But progressives, too, were not enamored of her As the new House Republican majority stumbles into power, with all the chaotic, embittered bumbling of a rich man’s son who can only seem to fail upwards, another, peculiar kind of political transition is taking place: Nancy Pelosi, 82, is leaving the House speakership, almost certainly for the last time.Perhaps no individual has come to symbolize the Democrats more to the people who do not like the party. To Republicans, Pelosi has long taken on a kind of mythic malice. To the Fox-watching white male, Pelosi symbolizes liberal elitism, a vague but totalizing specter of corruption, and that particular kind of liberal decadence that can be evoked by the name of the city that makes up nearly all of her longtime congressional district: San Francisco. She’s a woman in power, and she’s long been supportive of gay rights, and she opposed the Iraq war. She’s been a reliable opponent of conservatives’ favorite culture war crusades: she supports gun control and opposes Confederate statues. In an association facilitated by misogyny, her very face is a shorthand for liberal extremism, a visual code that denotes secularism, taxation and frightening new pronouns.Nancy Pelosi’s disdain for the Squad is not a good look for a leader | Arwa MahdawiRead moreWhich was always a bit of a stretch, because the fact of the matter is that the American left tends to hate Pelosi, too. To them, her two terms as speaker – first from 2007 to 2011, and then again from 2019 until this coming January – were eras of strictly enforced centrism. Under Pelosi’s tenure, the congressional agenda was kept well to the right of the base’s preferences, and leftist stars like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez were needlessly sidelined.Pelosi has taken positions that frustrate and disappoint the Democratic rank and file. She allegedly knew about waterboarding during the war on terror, and she didn’t object to it; she has backed Israel even in its most flagrant violations of Palestinian rights. And for all the fear and hatred she provokes in Republicans, some Democrats found her insufficiently willing to attack them. Under her leadership, the House impeached Donald Trump twice. But the Rubicon of impeachment was crossed only belatedly, in the face of Pelosi’s long, obstinate resistance. Many Democrats felt that the impeachments – along with other congressional oversight efforts against the Trump administration – were too tepid, and came too late.Neither of these understandings of Pelosi really capture the most striking aspect of her career – which has been characterized, above all, by an almost preternatural ability to discipline her caucus. Perhaps no speaker has been so successful at securing votes and cultivating the loyalties of her members; in interviews, Democratic House members speak of her with awe, like she’s something between a charismatic high school teacher and an emotionally withholding mom. This charisma is carefully cultivated: she famously tells no one her secrets, but has a long memory – both for past favors and past grievances. Some members seem to be eagerly seeking her approval. None seem willing to cross her. She has a natural’s instinct for politics, able to anticipate what will persuade someone to do what she wants them to do before they often know themselves.Pelosi cultivated this talent from a young age. At the beginning of her political career, Pelosi painted herself as a mom and housewife, the devoted spouse to Paul, an obscenely wealthy financier, and the doting mother of five. But this pretended humility was always a rather flimsy facade. In reality, Pelosi is the scion of an influential Democratic political family from Maryland: her father was a congressman, and both her dad and brother served as mayors of Baltimore. Her job as speaker was one she had been training for since infancy, or at least since she attended her first presidential inauguration, at 12.After she and her husband moved to San Francisco, Pelosi swiftly rose in the ranks of the California Democratic party, in part because Nancy, with her comfort among elites and the almost coercive power of her charm, was very good at raising money. She was elected to Congress in 1986, and never looked back; she quickly stood out as a charismatic voice in public and an aggressive negotiator in private. Pelosi became the leader of the House Democrats in 2003, and ascended to become the first – and so far, the only – woman to serve as speaker, in 2007.Under Pelosi’s tenure, the House Democrats have achieved some herculean tasks of political maneuvering. Everything that the Democrats have accomplished legislatively since 2007, they have accomplished thanks to Pelosi’s control of her caucus. She forced through the Dodd-Frank campaign finance reform bill in the face of the kind of fearsome opposition that a politician of weaker will would have balked at. She managed to pass the massive Affordable Care Act, expanding healthcare coverage to millions, in a show of persuasion and strength that could terrify grown men, and did.These are the kinds of bruising political battles that would end a different congressperson’s career, but Pelosi’s district is among the safest blue seats in the country. She has never faced a real challenger for her spot; during her election years, she doesn’t even engage in debates. Her re-election campaigns are little more than formalities: everyone, in San Francisco and elsewhere, knows that seat belongs to Nancy Pelosi for as long as she wants it. This safety is what allowed Pelosi to turn to her bigger, more national ambitions. Her real constituency has long been the whole country – or at least, the whole of the Democratic party.But recent years have taken the shine off of Pelosi. She stood in the way when Democrats wanted to pass ethics reforms that would have forbidden members of Congress from trading individual stocks; this past summer, she made the dangerous choice to travel alone to Taiwan, in a show of defiance against Xi Jinping. And the constant attacks on her personally from the right have begun to take a grim toll. This fall, a crazed man, deluded by rightwing media, broke into her California home with a hammer, and attacked Pelosi’s elderly husband, fracturing his skull; the intruder was there looking for Pelosi.Perhaps the quintessential moment of this part of Pelosi’s career came during the January 6 hearings, when footage of the speaker taken during the Capitol attack emerged. In the hidden location where the House members had been taken, she makes brisk phone calls, searching for a way to clear the Capitol. Her calm competence, contrasted with her extreme physical frailty, made for a portrait of integrity, endurance, courage. But even then, Pelosi seemed out of place. In the video, her institutionalism, and her faith in the legal process, shines through. You get the sense that she feels strongly that everything will be all right, if only she can make the right phone call. As the mob stormed the Capitol, and Trump orchestrated them on Twitter like a symphony conductor, Pelosi’s technocratic proceduralism could not have stood in starker contrast. She looked, perhaps for the first time, like a figure from a lost era.
      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist
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