A year after her speakership, Nancy Pelosi's influence remains strong
Consider This from NPR
NPR
4.2 • 6.2K Ratings
🗓️ 26 July 2024
⏱️ 14 minutes
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Summary
Pelosi is 84 years old — older than Biden — and no longer in House leadership.
But her part in the pressure campaign that led to a change in the Democratic ticket shows: she is still very much a leader, and her political pull remains strong.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Among the many Democratic Party insiders who publicly or privately urged Joe Biden to reconsider running for president again, |
| 0:07.0 | one played an outsized role. |
| 0:09.0 | It's up to the president to decide if he is going to run. We're all encouraging him to make that |
| 0:17.0 | decision because time is running short. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi went |
| 0:22.2 | on MS-HIBC's Morning Joe a show that Biden is known to watch urging the President to make a decision. |
| 0:28.0 | That got a lot of attention because at that point Biden had said repeatedly he had made a decision to stay in the race. |
| 0:34.5 | According to a lot of behind the scenes reporting, Pelosi also spoke with fellow members of |
| 0:39.0 | Congress and major donors and eventually the president himself expressing concern about |
| 0:44.4 | polls that showed Biden was losing grounded swing states he needed to win. |
| 0:48.3 | Eventually Biden got that message. |
| 0:50.5 | Nothing can come in the way of saving our democracy. that's |
| 0:55.0 | nothing can come in the way of saving our democracy. That includes personal ambition. |
| 0:57.0 | Nancy Pelosi is herself 84 years old that's older than President Biden. |
| 1:02.0 | She's no longer in-house leadership and |
| 1:04.2 | yet she remains a highly effective leader within the Democratic Party. |
| 1:08.8 | But I want to assure my enemies that it will take more than one election to take me down. |
| 1:14.6 | If you want to get rid of Nancy Pelosi, you better be ready to cut off my head and bury it separately |
| 1:18.8 | from my body. |
| 1:21.2 | That comedy sketch by the way is from 2010. |
| 1:23.0 | She's been in power for so long that three different cast members and two guests hosts |
| 1:28.0 | played her over the years on Saturday Night Live. |
| 1:30.0 | Consider this, the last week in American politics has been historic, with President Biden making |
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