Just a few months ago, it seemed like Nancy Pelosi’s bid to become speaker of the House of Representatives was in trouble. While attacks from the right had been commonplace for years, she came under fire from members of her own party, many of who wanted the Democrats to promote a new generation of leaders. Democrats running for their first term in the House from across the political spectrum—Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on the left, Conor Lamb on the right—kept their distance, while even some incumbents declared that it was time for a change. After Democrats’ landslide victory, CBS News declared Pelosi had a “math problem” because 16 members of her caucus had signed a letter opposing her as speaker.

It all came to nothing. Pelosi swiftly undercut the rebellion, which failed to coalesce around a single challenger, and was easily reelected earlier this month. Now the party’s de facto leader until its 2020 convention, she’s already proving her detractors wrong by dominating President Trump—both on camera and behind the scenes—as only a seasoned, ruthless legislative leader could do. She’s also managed to keep her Democratic colleagues in line, from her more squeamish and less calculating counterpart in the Senate, Chuck Schumer, to the young insurgents who sought her ouster.



Ever since Republicans partially shut down the government over Trump’s demand for border wall funding, Pelosi has followed a simple and effective strategy: Don’t budge an inch. The president is unpopular, the shutdown is unpopular, and a sizable majority blames the former for the latter. Thus, as The Atlantic’s Peter Beinart noted recently, “Republican members of Congress are under more political pressure to back down than their Democratic counterparts, and the longer the shutdown continues, the more that pressure should grow.”



Pelosi knows that she can win this standoff if she holds her caucus together and doesn’t compromise. In accomplishing both thus far, she’s laying waste to Trump’s presidency, preventing him from fulfilling his key campaign promise—the construction of a massive border wall—and pushing him to new lows of unpopularity, while her own poll numbers soar. If she keeps it up, the past month may go down as Pelosi’s greatest political accomplishment—and even redefine her place in American history.

The campaign against Pelosi began in earnest last spring when Lamb, running in a special election for a conservative seat in western Pennsylvania, pledged not to vote for her as speaker. To the surprise of many, he won. Over the ensuing months, dozens of Democrats then distanced themselves from Pelosi on the campaign trail, with many pledging to oppose her return to the speakership.

