As House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi returns to Washington after a month on the road, she also has to confront some legislative battles. | Getty POLITICO PLAYBOOK Pelosi: Democrats could take the House 'I think it comes down to probably a single digit, one way or another,' the House minority leader says in a POLITICO Playbook interview.

Nancy Pelosi has been extraordinarily cautious about saying her party would take back the House majority. But now, just two months before Election Day, the House minority leader says the Republican Party’s persistent struggles have put Democrats within striking distance and control of the chamber could be decided by the slimmest of margins.

“I thought in December I would’ve told you we’d win 20 seats, left to our own devices,” a relaxed and upbeat Pelosi said Wednesday in a Playbook Interview in her Capitol office. “Seeing the behavior of the [GOP] presidential candidates right after that when the debates [happened], I became even more optimistic because they were so pathetic … Since then, I think anything is possible. I think it comes down to probably a single digit, one way or another.”


She added, “If Hillary [Clinton] were to win 54-46, oh my God. It’s all over. If it's 53-47, and I think that’s in the realm of possibility ... that’s a big deal. Five or more [percentage points] is a big deal.”

While Democrats are well-positioned to capture the Senate, the House is a much steeper climb, and whether they can pull it off is a hotly contested topic in Washington. House Republican leaders say they've seen no evidence of a wave election that would put the chamber in play, but recently they've begun to privately concede that some races seem to be slipping away.

Pelosi, 76, was more optimistic than ever about her party's political footing as the election nears.

She declined to say whether she would run for speaker again if her party wins the majority, deferring to a caucus that has been unflinchingly loyal to her. Few believe Pelosi would pass up a chance to reclaim the speakership.

“It’s really up to the members,” she said. “We’ve been good to each other. Whatever they want is what I want. Right now all we are focusing on is amassing as many resources [as possible] … We can [only] win as many races as we can afford to win, so I spend a great deal of my time making sure we can win as many races as possible.”

She added, “We think that second to the president, the most powerful person is the speaker of the House. The Senate is more [constrained by] 60 votes and all that. Here there is awesome power in the speaker, and you can see what a difference that makes in passing an agenda.

"So we’ll see how we do in that election, but I think it’s pretty exciting and we’re going to do well, we are going to do very well," Pelosi said. "I really want us to do very, very, very well.”

But Pelosi is also atop a party that’s been shaken by a hacking scandal that forced out its national party chairwoman. The computer systems of the Democratic National Committee and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee were penetrated, and emails of top officials and aides were made public – an act widely seen as a sign that the Russian government was meddling in the U.S. election.

Since then, there have been signs that the Russian government gained access to voter databases in Illinois and Arizona. Pelosi, who has served on the House Intelligence Committee for many years, has urged Speaker Paul Ryan to vow not to use hacked material during the campaign season.

“The Russians…they doctor what they dump,” she said. “So it’s almost like saying, why would we allow ourselves to be at the mercy of a foreign government that is known to alter – and that’s part of the National Intelligence Estimate – that they alter information as they reveal it. And they’ve done it in other countries as well as in the U.S.”

Pelosi also warned the news media “not to be accomplices to a foreign government undermining our own election system.”

“Russians have a couple agendas,” Pelosi said. “Of course, they’d like to see the gift that keeps on giving win," referring to Donald Trump. "But they also want to undermine America in the public view and undermine democracy because authoritarianism is their way. So it’s about our country. These news organizations that are complicit with a foreign government dumping and doctoring documents…. The news agency won’t know what’s doctored or not.”

As Pelosi returns to Washington after a month on the road, she also has to confront some legislative battles. Government funding runs dry in a few weeks, and Pelosi said she’s seeking a three-month stopgap measure alongside a full year of funding to combat Zika. Then, in December, Pelosi wants Congress to wrestle with a funding bill that would run until September 2017.

Pelosi also warned House Republican leaders to drop plans to censure her colleagues for a June sit-in on the chamber’s floor in protest of what they see as slow-walking an overhaul of gun laws.

“I think that, pun intended, doing that will backfire on them,” she said. “They are going to besmirch the House Democratic Caucus, led by John Lewis, for a public demonstration that has been universally acclaimed. You can’t even imagine what we’ve heard through the break from Republicans and Democrats that something very special happened. If I were advising them, which I am not, I would advise them not to do that. It’s not a good thing for them, but if they want to do it, bring it on.”

**SUBSCRIBE to POLITICO Playbook: http://politi.co/1M75UbX