When Nancy Pelosi called Joe Biden to warn him about poor polling and imply that he would not be able to win the next election against Donald Trump, the president claimed to have data that said otherwise.
The 84-year-old former president did something few would dare: He said he wanted to meet with the advisers who told him this, implying that they were not telling the president the truth.
“Get Donilon on the phone,” he said, referring to longtime Biden aide and strategist Mike Donilon. “Show me what polls.”
Openly challenging the president and implying that his aides lied to him would be bold coming from anyone. Coming from Ms. Pelosi, it must have been particularly hurtful.
Ms. Pelosi and Mr. Biden have a history that goes back a long way.
A devout Catholic like him (Mr. Biden called her his “Catholic sister”), she has carried him to consecutive victories in the House of Representatives until his second term as president ends in 2022. She has made it clear to everyone that she considers him the best House speaker ever, even though they have clashed in the past.
And they share the same gut-level institutional political instincts and fears about what Trump might do to U.S. democracy.
Ms. Pelosi was Trump’s most implacable enemy during his presidency from 2016 to 2020.
But he also has a reputation as the toughest, smartest and most strategic thinker of the Democrats, and he appears to have concluded that to stop Trump this time, he must first stop Mr. Biden.
Ms Pelosi has refrained from directly calling for his resignation, but is now thought to have made behind-the-scenes phone calls to Mr Biden in an attempt to increase pressure on him to resign.
His strategy appears to have three prongs: first, private appeals to the president; second, when these are ignored, leaking those conversations to the press (his revelations about Mr. Donilon in the New York Times are a classic example); and third, rare but definitive public statements designed to keep the rebellion alive.
Rekindling the embers of opposition
Twice since his disastrous debate performance, Mr. Biden appeared to have snuffed out the embers of opposition. Both times, it was Ms. Pelosi who reignited them.
By July 10, Mr. Biden’s vows that only “God Almighty” could persuade him to step aside had drowned out public criticism from most elected Democrats. They were unwilling to risk their careers by angering the White House.
But then Ms. Pelosi appeared on Mr. Biden’s favorite morning show and delivered a very telling message.
“The president needs to decide whether he’s going to run or not. We all encourage him to make that decision because time is running out,” he said.
If Mr. Biden had not made this decision explicitly, it would have been scrupulously impartial. The flames of rebellion were immediately reignited.
The race took a shocking turn on July 13 when Mr Trump narrowly escaped an assassination attempt at a rally in Pennsylvania. Democrats said they believed the resulting furore would end his campaign to oust Mr Biden, whose time is running out anyway.
But Ms. Pelosi once again focused on the issue and called Biden shortly after to tell him his chances of winning re-election were very low.
With Mr. Biden still defiant a few days later, two close allies of Ms. Pelosi, representatives Adam Schiff of California and Jamie Raskin of Maryland, called for Mr. Biden to resign. Mr. Schiff was described by one Democrat as Ms. Pelosi’s “drone.”
Former President Barack Obama also expressed doubts about Biden’s ability to win the election through intermediaries on Thursday.
But the president remained defiant. When he said on Friday that he was “looking forward” to returning to the campaign trail next week, more of Ms. Pelosi’s allies called on him to resign.
Every time Mr. Biden seems to have found peace, the pressure on him increases once again with strategic evasions.
Record of making big calls right
Ms. Pelosi’s past experience of getting the big decisions right should worry the president.
For Republicans, the California champagne liberal (literally: she and her husband own a vineyard in the Napa Valley that supplies grapes to several wineries). The couple lives in a beautiful place in Presidio Heights, one of the most exclusive areas of San Francisco. His estimated net worth is over $100 million, making him one of the richest members of Congress.
But he has proven time and again that he has political acumen and can read voters well.
He was one of the very few Democrats who opposed the invasion of Iraq.
Ms. Pelosi has long resisted calls to remove Trump from office because she did not believe it would succeed and did not think he would emerge stronger if he survived.
He recalled that Bill Clinton emerged from the impeachment process with enormous popularity.
And he noted that the only reason Richard Nixon was removed from office was because even Republicans could see he had to go when the Watergate tapes came out. There has been no similar shift in sentiment about Trump in the modern Republican party, so it would be naive to expect success.
‘The most influential speaker of all time’
His greatest strength as a politician is his ability to assess support and opposition down to the final vote and know what to propose to legislators despite the narrowest of margins.
That skill was key in helping the House of Representatives pass Obama’s flagship Affordable Care Act by a vote of 219-212 in March 2010.
Despite Democrats having only a three-seat majority, he pulled the same stunt on Mr Biden in 2021, pushing through infrastructure legislation that eventually passed 228-206 with the support of 16 Republicans.
Republican Party lobbyist Bruce Melman called him “the most effective public speaker of all time” after the vote.
Much of this work has outraged the Alt-Right. On January 6, 2021, Capitol rioters went to ransack his office. Among those subsequently jailed was a woman who said, “We expected Nancy to shoot her in the head, but we didn’t find her.”
Mrs Pelosi stepped back from frontline politics shortly after her husband was attacked in their home by a Canadian conspiracy theorist.
But he appears to be making a last-ditch effort to thwart Trump by ensuring Mr Biden does not become the Democratic nominee on November 5.
While the President has openly said he needs more rest, Ms. Pelosi is working tirelessly to achieve her goals.
“People get tired,” he said about the art of negotiation. “You don’t get tired. You can never get tired.”
Now Biden is paying the price for this stubbornness.
