Nancy Pelosi: Elizabeth Warren doesn't speak for the Democratic Party

Nancy Pelosi is firing back at criticism from Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and other liberals in the Democratic Party that President Barack Obama’s administration has been too soft on Wall Street.

“There may have been a couple of people who say that, but that is not the consensus in our party,” the House minority leader said in an interview with CNBC’s John Harwood published Wednesday. “The financial industry doesn’t agree with that,” she noted.


The comments defending the administration come in the aftermath of last month’s lengthy intraparty squabble in which Pelosi and other House Democrats fought the White House over the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal and related legislation.

Pelosi also said she did not agree with Warren going after Mary Jo White, Obama’s appointee to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

“People will express themselves the way they do. That doesn’t mean they’re speaking for the party,” Pelosi said.

For her part, she said she is not leaving Congress anytime soon. One of the main reasons, she said, is that action needs to be taken to stem climate change.

“It’s a fight we have to make,” she said. “Our colleagues are in denial.”

She also had high praise for Hillary Clinton.

Americans “are so far ahead of the political leadership in Washington, D.C.,” the California Democrat said, when asked if the country was ready to elect a female president.

“You can’t say I should be elected because I’m a woman and Hillary Clinton [should] not,” she said. “That Hillary Clinton happens to be a woman is a wonderful thing. But I, yes, have confidence that she will be one of the most qualified people to go into the Oval Office in a long time.”

And she insisted the party can win back the House majority in 2016, dismissing widely shared predictions that it will be another 10 years before the Democrats retake the chamber.

“No, not at all. We’re very excited. I mean, we have people who want to run, they believe they can win, it’s a presidential year,” she explained.

Responding to Republican candidate Jeb Bush’s recent remark that the “presidency should not be passed on from one liberal to the next,” Pelosi smiled.

“Isn’t that something? That’s cute. As they say in Texas, ‘cute,’” she said, imitating a Texas accent.