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Tuesday, November 2, 2010
Pelosi had seized upon a rare Democratic alignment across government to orchestrate deals that she saw as historic and remarkable, but which seemed intrusive and ideological to a broadening swath of the U.S. electorate.
In the end, it cost her the powerful gavel.
All day Tuesday, Pelosi was relentlessly upbeat. She appeared before cameras with three young grandchildren and told reporters: "We're on pace to maintain the majority."
Even in confidence, friends said, Pelosi never betrayed any doubt. "I have never seen that moment," said Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.). "She's never let up. She's never given up the faith."
And as she stood before a a few hundred supporters Tuesday night, as some races were being called and placed her job in jeopardy, she gave no indication that she really believed the House was about to shift in a devastating voter repudiation of her leadership.
"We are not going back to the failed policies of the past. We are fighting for the middle class," Pelosi, in a white pantsuit and silver pearls, said with a constant smile.
She walked off stage to the strains of Tina Turner ("You're simply the best . . .") after a four-minute speech, in which she did not declare that her party would retain the majority. Perhaps she simply forgot. Or perhaps she knew what the night would bring.
"The speaker has said, as long as I've known her, in politics and certainly in Washington, D.C., everything is perishable," said Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), a confidant.
In the end, Pelosi was a speaker who couldn't speak up for herself. In the final run-up to a midterm election that she knew could be a dramatic rebuke, Pelosi rarely campaigned in public. She shuttled between private fundraisers and then hunkered down with strategists in Washington, largely out of sight of an angry and angsty American electorate - except in the barrage of ads airing every day all across the nation.
read more:As Democrats lose House, Nancy Pelosi's historic reign as speaker ends
