House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi speaks at a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington. | AP Photo Pelosi expected to stay on as House Democratic leader

Rep. Nancy Pelosi is widely expected to continue her run as the top House Democrat, and she spent Wednesday trying to boost her deflated caucus after Donald Trump's victory walloped Democrats across the country.

While she did not formally announce plans to stay on as minority leader, members throughout the caucus said they expected her to. And on a Wednesday afternoon conference call, Pelosi told members she had yet to speak to Trump, saying she wanted to hear from more of them before she reaches out to the president-elect.


“He was masterful at keeping the subject on Hillary and her emails," she told her colleagues. Pelosi vowed to work with Trump in areas where Democrats agreed — like a major infrastructure package — but promised to hold him accountable for the slew of incendiary comments he made as a candidate.

"All of the messages I’m getting are: while we must go forward and say we’re going to work with the new president — we want him to succeed — we cannot be insensitive to the vulnerability that people have in our country to some of the comments that the Republicans have made," she said.

And Pelosi tried to boost her caucus, saying while House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell are feeling good now about their emboldened majorities, things could quickly change when Trump moves into the White House.

"I think that Mitch McConnell and the speaker are going to find that their voices will be diminished as President-elect Trump takes office because the press is only interested in what the top of your party has to say," she said. "What President Obama had to say eclipsed what we had to say or even if we said it, if he didn’t say it then it didn’t exist."

Anger and confusion is pulsing through the House Democratic Caucus as lawmakers deal with the fallout from a Donald Trump-led defeat on Election Day that shocked official Washington, both Democrats and Republicans. And multiple members made their feelings evident on the call, trying to account for what went so wrong for Democrats.

But Democratic lawmakers and aides don’t expect that to be enough to knock Pelosi, still the most powerful woman in U.S. politics, from her post. Pelosi reiterated on the caucus call that it's up to members to pick their leaders but didn't announce official plans to run.

Members vented about various reasons things went wrong but Pelosi tried to offer a silver lining: being in the minority has some advantages.

"Running against Washington is a tried and true tradition, and a successful one in many cases in our country," she said. "We’re not starting a campaign against the Republicans right now. We want to work together. But I do hope that that political dynamic will give us some leverage with them."

Pelosi has led the House Democratic Caucus since 2004, and with the looming departure of President Barack Obama and Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, she's the only touchstone left to the Democratic glory days of a decade ago.

"For me, Pelosi is my person," said Assistant Minority Leader Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.). "I love Nancy Pelosi. I'm going to support her."

"I'm perfectly willing to submit my unfortunates going forward to our caucus," Clyburn added. "I will be having discussions with my family and members of the [Congressional Black Caucus] about their attitudes on what role I should play going forward."

Clyburn also insisted that House Democrats' failure to pick up more seats "had nothing to do with the leadership of the Democratic Caucus, I can tell you that."

Clyburn blamed FBI Director James Comey's decision to reopen the Clinton email probe — only to close it nine days letter — for suppressing Democratic turnout.

The South Carolina Democrat also said Hillary Clinton was "a much better policy person than politician. It's that simple. She relied on others to do the politics."

“Right now, we’re trying to absorb the shock of what happened,” Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) said. “I think people are actually going to fall back on strong leadership, including very much the current leadership team.”

Pelosi’s office declined to comment, but she did issue a statement congratulating Trump on his victory and pledging to work with the president-elect. Democrats read into that statement that Pelosi will remain in place.

“[W]e have a responsibility to come together and find common ground,” Pelosi said.

Yet rank-and-file members are angry, confused and disappointed, especially when party leaders spent months billing Trump as “the gift that keeps on giving,” as Pelosi often remarked. Top Democrats believed — wrongly — that Trump presented them with a unique opportunity to pick off at least a dozen GOP incumbents, or maybe even grab back control of the House.

Democrats — in both the House and Senate — also complained the Clinton campaign erred in presenting Trump as outside the Republican mainstream. They wanted her to tie Trump more closely to House and Senate Republicans.

So instead of making significant gains, Democrats are likely to walk away with only a handful of seats gained in the new Congress. The GOP stranglehold on the House is likely to last until well into the new decade.

“I think we lost sight of the economic message,” Connolly said. “I think we got so preoccupied with what an outrageous figure this person was, that the country would clearly see that if we only reminded them.”

Other Democrats have already started laying the blame with the Clinton camp, with multiple sources saying the Democratic nominee’s decision not to link Republicans to Trump’s candidacy for months was a huge mistake and cost the party significantly down ballot.

Now Pelosi has a choice to make. If she stays, she’ll work with Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), the incoming Senate minority leader, to try to rebuild the party's message to counter Trump going forward.

Pelosi, 76, has been the face of House Democrats for more than a decade. She's long been the party’s powerhouse fundraiser known for keeping an iron grip on her caucus. And with Hillary Clinton’s defeat, she still remains the most powerful woman in political history.

Pelosi also has weathered similar questions about her future. Democrats lost 63 seats and their majority in 2010, yet Pelosi stayed on. And following GOP gains in 2014, there was some discussion of whether the whole House Democratic leadership team — Pelosi, Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (Md.), and Assistant Minority Leader Jim Clyburn (S.C.) — should move on. All three are in their mid-70s, and they've collectively controlled the top spots in the caucus for more than a decade.

Even with discord lower down in the caucus, Democrats know there’s no credible alternative to mount a credible challenge to Pelosi’s leadership.

“I think we need in the cold light of day to analyze how did this happen,” Connolly said. “And as party I think we have to recognize that at least in this election, white working men and women felt pretty alienated from our candidate and our message and gravitated toward Trump in very substantial numbers.”

