Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on 2024, lessons for Democrats and the art of power
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You're listening to a podcast from Washington Post Live, bringing the newsroom to you live. Good morning. Welcome to The Washington Post. I'm Jonathan Capehart, associate editor at The Washington Post. I'm introducing someone who needs no introduction. Wonder Woman. Okay.

Author of the new book, "The Art of Power," Democratic Congresswoman from California, the 52nd Speaker of the House, Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi. Speaker Pelosi, welcome back to The Washington Post. - Wonderful to be here. Good morning, Jonathan. - So before we talk about your book, "The Art of Power," now that it's been three weeks, let's take stock of what happened on and since Election Day. Republicans clinched a trifecta, winning the presidency, the Senate, and the House.

Why do you think Donald Trump, despite all of his flaws, all of his indictments, all of his convictions, his historically low approval ratings, retook the presidency so decisively?

Well, first of all, good morning, everyone. Nice to see you here. Has it been three weeks? Just think of it as every morning that I get up and it's another morning of the reality, the reckoning. First of all, let me just say that we have...

If we're going to take an analysis of why that happened, we have to have some time to do it. People have their stories, this or that, and I've always said as an appropriator in Congress, the plural of anecdote is not data. We have to take a look and see the demographics of the election. We have to see the messaging of the election. We have to see many things to really understand

Analyze historically what it is, but make decisions politically about how to go forward I think that one of the what's going to be exciting about how we go forward is the new fresh talent That we will have out there including our vice president As we go forward and listening to what they have to say about how we go forward. I have some thoughts about

how we got to this place. In my book, I talk about what happened in 2008 when we had the meltdown on Wall Street and what that meant. Trillions of dollars in personal wealth going down, millions of people losing their homes, many people being questionable as to whether they could pay their mortgage, so many people losing their jobs. It had an impact, and it produced two things.

the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street. So people are saying, well, how come people on the right and left are voting the same way? That's the way it is when you're talking about, shall we say, privilege. People thought when we passed our bill, the TARP bill, to rescue the economy that we were bailing out Wall Street. Well, we weren't.

But the fact is that's how people perceived it. And I think that's one of the reasons we lost the election in 2010. People say it was the Affordable Care Act. I don't think it was that so much at all. It may have had an impact in certain races, but most of those races weren't even where people voted for the bill. So again, taking what are then now this time we have the COVID. COVID has a similar impact on people's

sense of security. And again, all the things that are implied with it in terms of supply chain and cost of living and then inflation, which followed that and the rest. So we have to take a bigger look at what are some of the factors that contribute to people's

pocketbook interest. It's all about the kitchen table. It is true. It is the economy. But what are some of the larger issues that we believe we addressed in our legislative agenda, but the public did not have the complete awareness that we would have liked them to have, and we take responsibility for that? Madam Speaker, if it was all about the kitchen table, then why did now President-elect Donald Trump run a campaign that was

openly hateful, racist, misogynistic, xenophobic. Because that's who he is. I mean, you're asking me why somebody is true to his nature? That's who he is. I think that was sincere on his part, unfortunately. But then does that mean that the hate he espoused, pardon the language here,

whatever economic message he had and trumped the economic message that the Harris-Walls campaign actually had and campaigned on. Well, as I said to you, any analysis of one thing or another has to be put in perspective of the full. And I say this as a former chair of the California Democratic Party. Elections are something that I take a big interest in, including elections.

We have two more races in California, so I don't think they had... I think in the House, we, under the leadership of Hakeem Jeffries, who's wonderful, and our leadership, Susan DelBene and others, we...

did better than anyone and will probably come down to a two vote difference in the House. So we were on our path in terms of our districts making a distinction. This person voted against a woman's right to choose, voted against saving the planet for the future, voted against gun violence prevention, voted against our democracy. And in those discrete races,

our position prevailed for the most part. Now, when you're in a race, if the presidential candidate is, shall we say, behind by X number of points, it's almost impossible to win that race in a, shall we say, a marginal race.

It's almost impossible. If it's six points or so, you can offset it. If it's eight or nine points, it's very hard to do. So we lost a few seats, but we gained a few seats. And we're going to gain a couple more in California in a matter of hours. So again, it's a...

We, as I say, in the House, we expect that we will have the House next time. It could even happen in this cycle because it's only a couple, two, three vote difference and you just don't know. But in any case...

Our members, our job title and our job description is one and the same, representative. Members represent their constituents, their districts, and they come to Congress to bring their point of view, not to espouse my point of view from San Francisco,

but to espouse their point of view. And so the consensus that we build, now could we be tattooed with things nationally in some of our more, shall we say, moderate districts? Well, that's what the other side did. So let's talk about the presidential. Behind the scenes, you were very instrumental in encouraging President Biden to leave the race. Even before he did, polls were showing that the voters were very concerned about his age.

Do you wish you had gotten involved earlier than you did? Let me just say, the president made his own decision, and I salute him for his patriotism, for his selflessness, and the rest for the decision that he made. My concern was not personally about the president. My concern was in the two years that we had

with the president in the majority, the Democrats in the majority. We had a record that made comparison with Lyndon Johnson, Franklin Roosevelt. I mean, we only had two years, so we couldn't do as expansive an agenda as they did. But we did great things. The president, under his leadership, 16 million jobs created versus the other guy who has the worst, not you, the worst job ever.

Creation record since Herbert Hoover. We saved the pensions of the labor unions. We had the child tax credit for putting money in the pockets of families in our country. The list goes on. That's just the rescue package. It addressed COVID.

Shots in arms, money in pocket, children safely back to school, people back to work. That was just the rescue package, and there's more to that. Then we did the infrastructure bill, the bipartisan. Well, we had 13 Republican votes, but nonetheless, bipartisan infrastructure bill. Job creation, all

all the things that are in that bill with justice. That is to say, it's just not a trickle-down bill. It's everyone participating. The CHIPS Act, the same thing where we said it's not just about CHIPS, it's about the future. It's about STEM for communities that have not been involved in the tech industry to make sure that they participate fully, women, people of color, and the rest, and to make sure that

People are in the trades. They're not necessarily college graduates. Understand that they can make a strong living. You know, if we have a... Let me use the example. If there's a grant that is given to a distinguished scientist, since I pointed to you on... Not me.

That scientist needs a plumber, a carpenter, an electrician, and the list goes on. So it's all about involving people in the economic success of our country. IRA to save the planet. At the same time, reduce the cost of prescription drugs, something we've been trying to do for a long time. And again, just for example, if you're a senior on Medicare and dependent on insulin, it was costing you $500, $600 a month.

under our bill, $35 a month at the top. Remarkable, remarkable. And again, the PACT Act honor our responsibilities to our veterans in a way that addresses the burn pit issue. All these kinds of things. Lincoln said public sentiment is everything. With it, you can accomplish almost anything. Without it, practically nothing. But for public sentiment to prevail, people have to know

And my concern was what I was just saying to you. Most people didn't understand how it affected them. That's not their fault they don't know. It's our responsibility to communicate. And I didn't think that the time in the first two years

convey that. The analogy I use is we can bake the pie, we can sell the pie, but it's hard to sell and bake at the same time. So we're passing these bills. We wanted more public awareness of what it meant at the kitchen table of America's working families. And really that

Democracy. People say to me, why do you think democracy is at stake? See, I think the belief, the beautiful belief in the strength of our country was something that people thought our democracy won't be at stake because of, but actually, what is democracy? Free and fair elections, peaceful transfer of power,

independence of the, an independent judiciary, rule of law, those kinds of things, but it's about your freedom. And your freedom is at that kitchen table too. The sizing, timing, even if you want to have a family, is not only a freedom issue, it's an economic issue. So my view was,

PEOPLE HAVE TO KNOW IF THEY'RE GOING TO VOTE IN THEIR SELF-INTEREST. AND WE CAN'T SAY YOU DIDN'T VOTE IN YOUR SELF-INTEREST. THEY KNOW THEIR SELF-INTEREST. BUT WE HAVE TO MAKE SURE THEY KNOW WHAT THE CHOICE IS. AND SO DEMOCRATS DID ALL THE

CONGRESSMAN, YOU HAVE TO TAKE A LOOK AT THE STATEMENT THAT WAS CLEARLY LAID OUT. THAT WAS ONLY SOME. RIGHT, THAT WAS ONLY SOME OF THEM. I JUST WONDER IF WHAT IS THAT ISSUE HERE IS MORE THAN A COMMUNICATION ISSUE, MORE THAN ARTICULATING ALL THE THINGS YOU JUST SAID. LET ME RUN THIS INTERESTING STAT BY YOU. IN THE 2008 ELECTION, PRESIDENT OBAMA GOT 63% OF VOTERS MAKING LESS THAN $50,000 A YEAR AND SENATOR JOHN MCCAIN GOT 35%.

In 2024, this past election, Vice President Harris got 48.5% of that vote and Donald Trump got 49%.

That means between 2008 and 2024, Democrats lost almost 30 percent of the working class votes. Can Democrats credibly call themselves the party of the working class? How do you win them back? Well, I disagree with your first sentence when you said it's more than communication, because I think communication had something to do with that, with all due respect. The fact is, if there were one thing that I could say

at the risk of anecdote not being the plural of data, is that communication is different now. Another anecdote was a group of Hispanic youngish, 30-ish year old voters came together after the election

Not one of them got their news from cable TV. Not one of them. All social media. I do think that the Republicans outdid us on the social media front. The presidential. We were doing it in our races. But again, we're discreet in certain places. They're global. National. Not quite as global as this conference, but they're national. And so I think that...

For us in this next election, we have to not only do as well as they did, we have to leapfrog over them. We have to task for what is the technology that enables us to take news to people where they receive it, not necessarily where we traditionally, well, we have TV, well, we have papers, well, we have this, that. No, where are they receiving it?

We don't know. As I said to you before, you have to see the whole... There are a lot of people who didn't vote. There are a lot of people that didn't vote that may have had an impact on that. Could that be because in certain districts they knew in their state Kamala would win and in their district the Democrat would win? So why should I go to the polls? We have to make sure that they were motivated enough to see the impact of all of that because when you look at those figures...

It isn't about, I didn't vote because my vote wouldn't make any difference because my district is so democratic, our state is so democratic. Let's find out what the reality of it is. And that takes some analysis. And I know that's a boring answer, but it is, in fact, what you have to do after an election. Otherwise, you're just going on notions or...

what's highly visible without really going into the depths of what it is. And that's really important to our country, not just politically, but to meet the needs of the American people. They have to know what is at stake for them. What is at stake for them? The repeal of...

Elimination of the Department of Education. Do you know what that means to children in economically disadvantaged areas, kids with special needs and the rest of that? What are we talking about here? Repeal of the Affordable Care Act.

Tens of millions of people have gotten access to health care because of that. But more than that, 150 million families have people with pre-existing conditions who will no longer be deprived of access to care because of that. And the list goes on. Your child is there until 26 years old on your program, giving that person opportunity for more education, more entrepreneurial spirit to start

a business if he or she, she or he wishes to do so. And again, the list goes on on the Affordable Care Act and what that means to the economic and the health. It's about financial health as well as personal health. One of the things that we are doing, what we did after 2016, which was a heartbreaking election for us, and I know you had the debate with, not the interview with President,

Clinton, really a genius in all of this, but we had some after-action review after 2016 as well. And now we have to have an after-action review now. But after that, we immediately, like within 24, 36 hours, well, we waited until Hillary made her speech, but we announced that we were going to save the Affordable Care Act. And in the course of that time, we had 10,000 events around the country.

where people came and told their stories. They didn't talk about provisions in the bill. They talked about, my child was born with a heart condition, my sibling had cancer. They told their stories. And we launched it on Martin Luther King weekend because Martin Luther King said so beautifully of all the forms of inequity, inequality, injustice, inequality,

health care is the most inhuman, he used the word inhuman, because people can die. And so he was such a leader in so many ways, but also in this health care. And that kept our Democrats intact from any of these fake initiatives on the part of the Republicans. And we're doing that right now. We announced it after this election, too, so that people can see very directly what this means to them.

Speaker Pelosi, we've got four minutes and 25 seconds, and I have time for two questions. One related to your book. You spent all that time writing this book, so let's talk about it. You write that power springs from the people, from consensus. It goes back to the Lincoln quote that you mentioned earlier.

In your right, it isn't something that comes from on high. You define it as an art. But for Trump, it's not the art of power, but the force of power. Has this election redefined how power is wielded in Washington? No, I think it defines one election. And that's the way it has to be because our democracy, in my view, our democracy is at stake when we are having really... See, here's the thing. Let's get fundamental. Let's

push back a bit. For a while now, including him, but other Republicans as well, and I'm not, this is not an election about Bob Dole or Mitt Romney or George Bush, father or son or anything like that. John McCain, this is a different dynamic here. We're talking about patriotism. We're talking about belief in the role of government. Since the beginning of our country, it has been

the beautiful debate of a democracy, disagreement as to what the role of government is, what the role of the central government is versus state governments and the rest of that. And that's the vitality of it all. These people don't believe in governance and they don't believe in science.

For me, the answer to so many of our challenges is science, science, science, and science. Well, it's health, it's economic success and prevailing globally in technology. Whether it's saving the planet, the list goes on. But they don't believe that. So if science says we have to do this about climate or about children's development, and government says, OK, so we have these protections or these suggestions,

Two no's do not make a yes. So this is, we're talking about a big deal thing. We're not talking about this. So if you're putting people in those positions who have no...

Now, again, President won. He has a right to his appointments. I don't... But he also has a responsibility to have... Whether we agree with their position or not, we have to have some respect for their knowledge, their perspective on what this means for the country and how that translates to the kitchen table. So I don't call this...

I'm more hopeful about how we can pull this back in, respectful that the people have spoken. It's a democracy. The people have spoken. But the fact is that we have to examine how

so many people didn't vote and those who voted. I mean, how could we have protected the, how could we have protected, not only protected, insured the pensions of union workers, have prevailing wage, all these things, fairness and justice and people saying,

I don't know what that means to me, because the cultural issues have also continued and have sort of revived. The three Gs: gays, God, and guns. -Madam Speaker. -That's it. Yeah. And that has an impact on people's voting. God -- That's their view of -- The independent decision-making that God has given women and families, that's their view of God.

Madam Speaker, we've got 39 seconds left, but we're going over much of the consternation of the folks in the control room. But I cannot have you leave without putting up this question, audience question, from Donna Miller from Ohio. "How long did it take to stop taking personal attacks personally?" Parentheses. "Your skin may be thick, but you still look great. Now, give your feet a break and stop wearing heels."

SO HOW LONG DID IT TAKE TO STOP TAKING THE PERSONAL ATTACKS PERSONALLY? WELL, I DON'T -- IN OTHER WORDS, I KNOW MY WHY. I'M NOT WHY I DO THIS. I KEEP SAYING TO CANDIDATES, KNOW YOUR WHY BECAUSE THIS IS NOT FOR THE FAINT OF HEART. THIS IS A ROUGH ARENA. YOU'RE A TARGET ONCE YOU'RE EFFECTIVE. AND I THINK THAT WAS WHY I WAS A TARGET BECAUSE I WAS EFFECTIVE LEGISLATOR, POLITICAL FORCE, ALL THE REST, WINNING THE HOUSE FINALLY FOR THE DEMOCRATS WHEN WE DIDN'T.

So she immodestly, I say that for the women to know your power out there. So, but here's the thing. I didn't care what they said about me. I considered the source. But the Republicans did heap all of this cloven feet, horns, inflamed devil, all that. And that contributed to this...

attitude that people could say anything about anything. The politics of personal destruction, it started under Clintons. They did that to the Clintons, so on, fairly. So in any case, I didn't care about that. I'd say to people that it's hard that when you're trying to convince women to run, that their children would come home from school crying because there was a fake ad on TV describing them as unethical or something like that. So we've got to take that out of politics. However...

when this attitude had somebody go to my house in the middle of the night, violate the sanctity of our home, the safety of my husband looking for me because what I had said about your friend. Somebody's friend. I don't know. But anyway, he's president-elect. That's really...

And then for them to make a joke of it. Imagine, imagine somebody going into your home, attacking your family member with a hammer near death. We don't even know if he's going to live yet. And they're making a joke on their websites and all that. And the governor of Virginia, what's that other guy's name?

Elon Musk making a joke about that's just not right. And then when the president was attacked, we all prayed for him. We're so grateful that he was not seriously injured and stuff like this. So we are different from each other in that respect.

I don't know, question of shoes, that's just the way it is. That's your thing. That's the way it is. But thank you, Donna, for looking out for my whatever it is. But let me just say, my why is for the children. I went from housewife to house member to house speaker for the children. And I always quote, let the record show...

But I am quoting a Republican president now, Teddy Roosevelt, and he talked about in the arena speech. In the arena, he said, when you're in the arena, you're no longer a spectator. So I say to, especially the women, when you're coming into this, know your power, know your why, be yourself as you come in here. When you go in that arena, sometimes you have to take a punch.

Sometimes you have to throw a punch for the children. Oh, wow. And on that note, Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi, thank you very much for coming to Washington Post. Thanks for listening. For more information on our upcoming programs, go to WashingtonPostLive.com.