Pelosi Was Bad. What Follows Could Be Worse

National Review Online

Friday, November 07, 2025

 

Representative Nancy Pelosi, 85, announced on Thursday that she would not seek reelection in 2026, putting an end to a career in Democratic politics that goes back to Ronald Reagan’s first term.

 

Born and raised in Baltimore as the daughter of Congressman Thomas D’Alesandro Jr., she moved to California with her husband, Paul Pelosi, in 1969. As a San Francisco progressive with a pragmatic streak, Pelosi was a skilled vote-counter who was able to muscle through more left-wing policy than any Democratic legislator since LBJ.

 

Pelosi served as leader of the House Democrats from 2003 to 2023 both in the majority and minority. At the height of her power in 2009–2010 when Democrats had the White House and massive majorities in both chambers of Congress, Pelosi was instrumental in passing a blizzard of bills. Among her greatest misses were the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, a gift to trial lawyers that expanded the statute of limitations for gender pay discrimination claims; the Dodd–Frank financial regulatory bill that enshrined “too big to fail,” ravaged community banks, and created the unaccountable Consumer Financial Protection Bureau; and a massive “cap and trade” scheme aimed at curbing carbon emissions. The latter was too radical to be taken up by the Democratic-controlled Senate, even during the window when the party had a filibuster-proof majority.

 

While Pelosi benefitted from having a massive majority during this period, many of its members were elected in Republican-leaning districts. She had to make compromises to convince those swing-district Democrats to cast unpopular votes to advance the ideological cause while also keeping the hardened progressives from making the perfect the enemy of the good.

 

This was demonstrated more than anywhere in her 13-month crusade to pass Obamacare. To get it across the finish line, she had to abandon the idea of creating a government-run insurance plan and persuade the swing staters that once everybody found out everything that was in Obamacare, it would become popular.

 

Over time, she may have been proven correct, in that the program created a new population of dependents that Republicans were reluctant to cut off by repealing the law. Yet, in the nearer term, her leadership proved politically disastrous.

 

Democrats suffered one of the worst midterm defeats in history in 2010, losing 63 seats. Four later, the bungled rollout of Obamacare cost them even more.

 

Pelosi would return to the speakership again in 2019, where she had a significantly smaller majority that included a burgeoning socialist wing. She ended up pursuing two failed impeachments against Donald Trump. Once Joe Biden took office, despite only a cushion of a few votes, she managed to pass trillions of dollars of new spending, which exacerbated the inflation that led to Trump’s comeback.

 

While she stepped down as leader after the 2022 midterms, it was clear that she still wielded incredible power when she led the charge to pressure Joe Biden to drop out of the presidential race in 2024.

 

Pelosi has been simultaneously a radical but also a moderating force within the Democratic Party. While the party of Nancy Pelosi was bad, the party of Zohran Mamdani will likely be even worse.