Nancy Pelosi stands alone.

As Republicans prepare to dismantle Obamacare, the longtime House Democratic leader is facing her biggest fight in years, perhaps the biggest since she twisted dozens of Democratic arms to pass the bill in the first place seven years ago


And this time, she’s girding for battle without the key allies — Harry Reid and Barack Obama — who helped her muscle through the law that ultimately cost her the speakership and catapulted Democrats into the minority.

“Clearly, Obamacare is part of Nancy’s legacy,” said Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.). “Nancy is a very skilled tactician and strategist, and Democrats need both right now.”

“The Affordable Care Act is important for all of our legacies, including President Obama’s,” Pelosi told POLITICO.

Some Hill aides and lawmakers privately speculate defending Obamacare will be one of Pelosi’s last stands. And the 76-year-old California Democrat, who went through a bruising challenge to her leadership after the 2016 election, recently alluded to as much behind closed doors.





During a Feb. 15 meeting, Pelosi told some high-ranking lawmakers she was here only to defend her signature domestic achievement and would have left Congress had Hillary Clinton won, according to sources in the room. With Clinton in the Oval Office, Pelosi’s signature achievement would have been safe. With Donald Trump in the White House, it’s facing imminent destruction.

“If Hillary had won, [Pelosi] probably would have been offered the ambassadorship to Rome and lived happily ever after,” Connolly mused.

A source close to Pelosi acknowledges she’s said “to members many times that her motivation to remain in Congress is to see that the ACA is protected.”

But that source and other Democrats insist it isn’t a vanity quest to keep her legacy intact. Millions more Americans received health insurance because of Obamacare, and Pelosi wants to see those gains continue.

“This is a very big deal. She shepherded it through, it would not have gotten through without her,” Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) said.

Asked whether it is part of Pelosi’s legacy, Cummings said, “No doubt about it. And I believe in the end, we will win.”

Yet Pelosi’s predictions about Obamacare have often been off, sometimes dramatically so, on the politics of the law.

Pelosi said the 16-month struggle to pass the bill — which helped give birth to the tea party movement — wouldn’t cost the Democrats control of the House. It did. Pelosi said Americans would eventually come to love the Affordable Care Act. They never have. Pelosi thought Hillary Clinton would win in November and Obamacare would be saved. Clinton didn’t, and the ACA is in big trouble. Now, Pelosi predicts Republicans won’t be able to repeal the law. They will try, but it’s not clear that they’ll succeed.

House Republicans can pass a bill to kill Obamacare without any Democratic votes. But Pelosi is trying a little guerrilla warfare to amp up the pressure on the GOP, in addition to making sure her members get out of the way as Republicans back-stab each other in public.

Nearly half of Republican lawmakers hail from states that have expanded Medicaid through Obamacare, a program the GOP repeal bill wants to freeze and eventually phase out.

For the past several weeks, Pelosi has been meeting with senior House Democrats from these states to coordinate a strategy targeting GOP lawmakers from those states.

Pelosi has also spoken recently with GOP governors whose states have the Medicaid expansion, including Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie to seek their support.

Meanwhile, Democrats are planning to make committee markups on the repeal bill, which kick off Wednesday, as painful as possible for the GOP by forcing Republicans to take embarrassing votes on amendments.

Pelosi, perhaps more than anyone else, should be credited for getting Obamacare passed in the first place.





She pushed back hard when the health care bill appeared certain to fail and Obama and his top aides considered doing a smaller, “skinny” version of the plan. Pelosi dismissed the idea as “kiddie care,” and she eventually persuaded Obama to stick with the original plan. She leaned on dozens of lawmakers whose votes were needed to get the bill through the House. The bill passed the House 219-212 on March 21, 2010.

Former Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), another critical player in the Obamacare fight, said Pelosi “did more than any other member in the House of Representatives to get the bill passed. But what’s at stake is not her or President Obama or my or any other person’s legacy. What’s at stake is the chance to give health insurance to millions of Americans, and they will certainly lose it if this Republican bill becomes law.”

Obama was overwhelmingly reelected in 2012, and Reid held onto the Senate majority until 2015. But after Obamacare passed, House Democrats lost 63 seats, in the 2010 midterm elections, costing Pelosi the speakership.

Since then, Democrats have remained in the minority wilderness with little prospect of taking back the House anytime soon.

Pelosi has held onto control of the Democratic Caucus, but at a price. One-third of the caucus voted in favor of ousting her after the disastrous 2016 election. Pelosi beat back the challenge from rank-and-file Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio) but not without first making concessions to appease angst over what members said was her iron control of the caucus.

Now for Pelosi, who has been able to stay atop the caucus over the past 14 years in part by being a record-setting fundraiser and perhaps the best vote counter on Capitol Hill, this fight is much different.





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This time it isn’t about delivering the votes. This fight is about keeping the 193 members of her caucus on the sidelines, away from triggering any controversy that could unite GOP lawmakers, while Republican infighting threatens to doom its own repeal bill.

And more than anything, for Pelosi the ultimate key to victory may be something she’s done many times before: riding out the storm.

“Republicans have been and continue to be deeply, deeply, deeply divided,” House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said Tuesday.

So far, the strategy is working. Members of the House Freedom Caucus blasted the Republican repeal plan after meeting with Vice President Mike Pence on Tuesday afternoon.

And key conservative groups including Heritage Action and FreedomWorks have panned the bill as “Obamacare lite.” The Club for Growth is demanding Republicans oppose the bill it has dubbed “RyanCare,” saying it will count the vote on its conservative scorecard.

“The longer this thing hangs out there … the less of a chance it has of passing the House,” New Jersey Rep. Frank Pallone, the top Democrat on the Energy and Commerce Committee, told reporters Tuesday. “God knows if it has any chance of passing the Senate.”

