After George W Bush won re-election 20 years ago, Pelosi defeated his plan to privatize Social Security, despite having only a Democratic minority in the House. Counting the votes on the Republican side, she recognized that due to internal disagreements, they didn't have enough for any version of privatization unless some Democrats joined them. So she made sure nobody in her caucus made any deals with Bush, and privatization collapsed.
Then she orchestrated the turning point in public debate over the Iraq War. She had her ally John Murtha, a Vietnam veteran with two Purple Hearts who had initially voted for the war, introduce the resolution to withdraw. A Republican called him a coward on the floor of the House, and after fiery debate, Republicans accepted that the insult was indefensible and had it stricken from the Congressional Record. Democrats got their confidence back, and supporting withdrawal quickly became the party's consensus position.
After seeing Dick Gephardt give Bush the Iraq War, I learned how bad Democratic leadership could be. When Pelosi came in, everything got so much better. The more I've watched Schumer and Jeffries' incompetent leadership, the more I've missed her.
What made Pelosi such a great leader was her ability to figure out how many votes she could get for or against any version of major legislation. Even Obama's White House briefly gave up on Obamacare after an unexpected Senate loss cost them their filibuster-proof majority. Pelosi was the only one who knew she could find the votes for an alternative way of passing the bill that put more pressure on the House, and she did it.
Much-needed generational change is coming to the Democratic Party. But it's an open question whether we'll ever have another House leader who can count votes like Pelosi, or whether there ever was one before. Bad legislation died because she blocked it; good legislation passed because she carried it. She did more to move American political outcomes leftward than any other person in my lifetime.
