Is Nancy Pelosi Really the Democratic Party’s Puppet Master?

The memes practically write themselves.

Find a picture of Nancy Pelosi where she’s confidently doing something — walking in the Capitol with her cell phone works best — and write a caption, summoning Pelosi’s voice, where she’s laying out her vision of how one of the messiest periods in Democratic politics will play out.

The memes have gone viral, helping shape the narrative that Pelosi puppeteered the outcome of her party’s power struggle to her exact specifications.

Notably, she did get her way on a number of fronts. President Joe Biden is no longer the party’s nominee. Vice President Kamala Harris is. And her former House colleague, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, is on the Democratic ticket.

But for all of the Godfather-esque pieces falling into place, for all the legs of her “Uncut Gems” parlay hitting, House Democrats who know and respect the former speaker see the situation a little differently.

“Nancy Pelosi did not have a master plan,” Democratic Rep. Jared Huffman told NOTUS.

“She was not playing three-dimensional chess to orchestrate every member of Congress that came out and made public statements,” he said. “But she just carries so much gravitas that, when she did engage, it had a profound impact.”

A fellow Californian whose district is separated from Pelosi’s by the Golden Gate Bridge, Huffman is uniquely positioned to know about the former speaker’s behind-the-scenes operation. He was one of the 33 House Democrats to call on Biden to withdraw his campaign, and he actually was a key player in sidelining the president, authoring a letter to push the Democratic National Committee to delay their nominating timeline.

Despite his own involvement in the effort to usher Biden off the ticket, Huffman said Pelosi really wasn’t calling the shots — at least not explicitly.

“She was not micromanaging or giving assignments to people or anything like that,” Huffman told NOTUS. “The media reports that have suggested that are just way off the mark, but she didn’t have to do that. That’s the point.”

That is the point.

But it’s a point largely lost in an unsubtle internet world — a world where Pelosi always has a plan and usually comes out on top.

The truth is far more complex. No, Pelosi wasn’t organizing the Democratic caucus against Biden. But yes, she still played a pivotal role. Because even if Pelosi wasn’t exactly the puppet master, she knows where all the strings are.

As her party scurried to find a post-debate path to the White House, Pelosi redirected the conversation, tactfully, at two key moments. Just when her party started despairing that Biden would remain the nominee — the president insisted it was a settled matter and that only the Lord Almighty could change his mind — Pelosi appeared on his favorite morning show to suggest the president was still thinking about it.

“We’re all encouraging him to make that decision, because time is running short,” Pelosi said, opening the door for more conversation.

The moment gave many in the Democratic ranks the space they needed to, if not call on Biden to drop out, then at least continue discussing the question.

After Donald Trump was nearly assassinated and Biden announced he had COVID-19, it was once again looking like Biden could just wait out the clock — get to August, when the DNC would make him the nominee, and just convince Democrats there’s no other option. But it was at that pivotal moment when details of a private call between Pelosi and the president conveniently leaked to CNN. Pelosi reportedly told Biden he would lose to Trump and drag Democrats down with him.

For the next 72 hours, Biden was inundated with Democratic lawmakers urging him to step aside. Ultimately, Biden dropped his presidential bid three days later.

Biden allies told Politico the president still considers Pelosi “ruthless” for her role in his ouster. The decades-long friends have not spoken since the president bowed out.

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi talks to The Associated Press. J. Scott Applewhite/AP

As the Democratic Party navigated that unprecedented moment, Pelosi was something of a North Star. Democratic sources told NOTUS throughout the ordeal that they looked to the speaker emeritus for direction, tracking the news for clues to her thinking and even watching her body language for hints of approval.

Rep. Mike Quigley was the first House Democrat to publicly, as he put it, “broach the subject” of Biden’s performance. Before he called on him to step down as the nominee, Quigley consulted with pollsters who painted a doomed picture of the party’s down-ballot prospects if Biden remained the nominee.

He also spoke to lawmakers. Some urged him not to air his concerns, warning of a calamitous contested convention. (According to Quigley, some colleagues asked him, “‘Who do you think you are?’”) Others told him, “Better you than me.”

But one person he never spoke to throughout the entire ordeal was Pelosi.

“All I know is what I had read and seen about her role,” Quigley told NOTUS, adding that he considers Pelosi’s appearance on “Morning Joe” “very important” to Biden’s ultimate withdrawal.

Quigley said he took it upon himself to set a respectful tone, however, framing the conversation about Biden stepping aside as a chance to “solidify his legacy as hopefully having saved our democracy twice” — language that was soon picked up by other lawmakers.

Like other lawmakers who spoke to NOTUS, Quigley called his decision to speak out a personal one that came with serious risks to his political future. It came at the risk of party fracture. But when Harris became the clear heir apparent, Quigley said, “I’ve been called ‘the most relieved man in America,’ is a joke here in Chicago.”

In the immediate aftermath of Biden’s withdrawal, lawmakers who expressed trepidation about the president’s chances against Trump echoed Huffman’s and Quigley’s reads on Pelosi’s involvement. While Democrats were taking some cues from the former speaker’s public maneuvering, they weren’t taking orders.

House Oversight Ranking Member Rep. Jamie Raskin was a critical voice urging Biden to consider ending his bid. Having risen to prominence in the wake of Jan. 6, Raskin’s perspective on the party’s best chances to beat Trump carried weight within the caucus. The fact that Raskin published a private letter to Biden in The New York Times saying “there is no shame in taking a well-deserved bow” was not lost on his fellow House Democrats.

But the day after Biden withdrew, Raskin told NOTUS he wasn’t aware of “any coordinated strategy in any way” coming from top party brass.

That same day, Rep. Don Beyer — who did not publicly call for Biden’s ouster but reportedly expressed concerns about his fitness atop the ticket in a private leadership meeting — told NOTUS he had “no direct communication” with Pelosi.

He said he wasn’t aware of Pelosi having any meetings with certain key groups.

“My impression was that she didn’t,” Beyer told NOTUS. “Because part of her wonderfully gracious and graceful handoff to Hakeem [Jeffries], Katherine [Clarke] and Pete [Aguilar] was to say, ‘OK, you’re the leaders now. I’m here to help you, but I’m not going to do your job for you.’”

Although Pelosi was hardly issuing assignments for her colleagues from secret, smoke-filled backrooms — as some would have you believe — internet onlookers were not the only people who put their faith in Pelosi. An unnamed House Democrat put their assessment bluntly to Axios in mid-July: “She’s the f***ing power-broker. She’s the hatchet.”

Another lawmaker told NBC News that Pelosi deserves “50%” of the credit for Biden stepping down.

Still, at a recent roundtable with veteran Capitol Hill reporters, Pelosi took pains to clarify her communications with the Democratic caucus. In her retelling, she did not seek out conversations with her colleagues. Instead, angsty lawmakers — particularly vulnerable frontline members — called her.

“People called me. Hundreds,” Pelosi said, according to Punchbowl News. “A few of them I spoke to, close friends or whatever. I said the same thing. ‘Whatever you have to say, say to [the Biden campaign]. I’m not your messenger in all this.’”

“Now, it did give me cause for concern that so many people were calling about all this,” she said. “But it wasn’t something that I was going to be their vehicle to the president. That wasn’t the point. The point was not letting [Trump] take one step in office.”

Pelosi’s office didn’t return a request for comment on this story.

But the former speaker wasn’t the only top congressional Democrat with those concerns. Her protégé, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, and her close confidant, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, publicly left the door open for Biden to withdraw and privately brought their own worries to Biden.

Rep. Mark Pocan — who called on Biden to withdraw in a joint statement with Huffman — painted the party’s mutiny against Biden as something of a grassroots, bottom-up effort rather than a top-down directive.

“Everyone shared what we were hearing,” Pocan told NOTUS after Biden withdrew. “We had hundreds and hundreds of calls in my office. Overwhelmingly people were concerned that somehow Trump could get elected. I think there was definitely a group effort.”

Once Biden called off his reelection bid and the party coalesced around Harris, the work of top Democrats was not done. Harris needed to select a running mate — and progressive internet circles pleaded with Pelosi to deliver Walz.

Pelosi reportedly favored Walz during the Harris campaign’s abbreviated veepstakes. Sources close to the former speaker told The Hill that Pelosi is partial to former members of the lower chamber. Conspicuously, Walz was the only House guy in contention.

When Harris announced Walz, Pelosi was again widely credited with putting her finger on the scale.

And yet, once again, House lawmakers told NOTUS Pelosi wasn’t helming any whip operation. Raskin said he wasn’t “aware of any real campaigns going on” other than “obviously everybody was expressing their favorites to other people who asked them.”

A longtime member of House leadership, Rep. Dan Kildee, privately lobbied the Harris campaign to select Walz alongside a slew of other “enthusiastic” House Democrats.

But for all the internet lore, Kildee told NOTUS, “I haven’t talked to Nancy directly about this.”

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Riley Rogerson is a reporter at NOTUS.