After Barack Obama was elected, Pelosi became his essential legislative partner, helping deliver stimulus funding, Obamacare, and Wall Street reform. She also became the GOP’s chief bogeyman: they were eager to make the polarizing San Francisco liberal the face of the Democratic Party, plastering her face in hundreds of millions of dollars of television ads across the country.
Read More: How Nancy Pelosi Saved the Affordable Care Act.
The backlash to Obamacare helped power Republicans to the House majority in 2010. Yet rather than step down then—or in 2012, or 2014, or 2016—she insisted on staying on, having concluded that there was no one else as well suited to do what needed to be done: raising hundreds of millions of dollars for Democratic campaigns, keeping her fractious party caucus in line, negotiating budgets and legislation with the GOP.Â
Meanwhile, the Republican men who held the speakership flailed through years of gridlock and shutdowns, complaining bitterly how hard the job was that Pelosi had made look easy. Whether or not you agree with her politics, few close observers would dispute that Pelosi was a master of her craft, a legislator of rare skill in an era where polarization and paralysis made it historically difficult to get anything done. One of the more surprising tributes to Pelosi on Thursday came from the right-wing Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who said on CNN, “I will praise Nancy Pelosi. She had an incredible career for her party. I served under her speakership in my first term in Congress and I’m very impressed at her ability to get things done.” (In 2021, the Pelosi-led House stripped Greene of her committee assignments, in part for social-media posts calling for Pelosi’s execution.)
