House Democrats ended Election Day controlling fewer seats than they have in nearly 80 years, but Nancy Pelosi isn’t conceding anything.

“I do not believe what happened the other night is a wave,” Pelosi said in her first sit-down interview since Democrats lost a dozen House seats to Republicans on Nov. 4. “There was no wave of approval for the Republicans. I wish them congratulations, they won the election, but there was no wave of approval for anybody. There was an ebbing, an ebb tide, for us.”


As for whether she would consider stepping down as minority leader, Pelosi said she’s needed now more than ever.

( Also on POLITICO: Read the transcript of the Pelosi interview )

“Quite frankly, if we would have won, I would have thought about leaving,” Pelosi declared, a remark that will likely surprise both admirers and detractors.

Pelosi’s take on the midterms is this: It wasn’t a Republican wave, her party’s message is fine and while President Barack Obama thinks Democrats need to play better politics, she believes Democrats just need to better engage voters.

As Pelosi prepares to run for another term as House minority leader, a position she’s expected to win unchallenged next week, the powerful Californian is unrepentant about a brutal election night.

Seated in her Capitol Hill office on Friday, the 74-year-old Pelosi offered her thoughts on the state of her caucus in a Republican-controlled Congress, revealing a leader who is standing by her principles, policies and strategies.

From plans to harness her power among fellow Democrats to keep her job as minority leader, to digging in on Obamacare and the party’s economic messaging, Pelosi is setting up her party to fight to take back the House in 2016 on similar grounds as this year, apparently without a dramatic shakeup of the Democratic leadership team.

“It’s always time for fresh leadership, but my members have asked me to stay,” she said. “If they want me to stay, I stay. If they don’t want me to stay, I won’t stay.”

Some of this is the spin that any party leader uses. Some of it is vintage Pelosi — she shrugs off defeats as lessons learned, and never overplays her victories. She is an experienced enough pol to know that both happen routinely in a political career that has spanned nearly four decades.

It’s also a reflection of her own power inside the House Democratic Caucus. She’s built loyalty around her incredible fundraising prowess, raising more money than anyone else for House Democrats — $65 million for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and another $35 million for members this cycle alone, her office said. She hit 750 fundraisers and events in the past two years, spending 200 days on the road this year raising money.

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Democrats don’t often rebuke her publicly, but since the election, a number of younger members and staffers have begun to say privately it’s time for new blood in leadership to energize the party ahead of the 2016 elections — they don’t want Pelosi gone but want her to cast a wider net within the party for advice.

On a conference call with members last Thursday, just two days after the election, Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.) said Democrats need to “rethink” their message after a number of young people voted for Sen.-elect Cory Gardner, a Republican, over Sen. Mark Udall, a Democrat.

Pelosi cut her off, sources on the call said.

Other Democratic aides and insiders have grumbled privately, too, that they want more dramatic moves on the policy and messaging front.

“As a party, we need to change,” a senior Democratic aide said. “[Voters] like our policies. All this leftie [talk], the country likes, but somehow the message about us as individual members of the conference isn’t breaking through. There is great unrest.”

Pelosi is giving ground that Democrats need to do a better job at bringing young people to the polls — suggesting that Democrats launch an aggressive voter engagement drive for 2016 just one day after the election.

“We have to engage people in voting again. Two-thirds of the electorate did not vote in this election the other night,” Pelosi said. “That’s shameful.”

Pelosi suggested the new effort has to go far beyond just registering likely Democratic voters — the party needs to provide an “inspiration” to get people to the polls.

“It’s not just registration. You can’t just go up to someone and say, ‘Will you register to vote?’ You have to have an inspiration. It’s not just registration, it’s the whole engagement of it,” Pelosi said.

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On Nov. 4, as the Election Day drubbing for Democrats unfolded, Pelosi gathered with a small group of supporters and staffers at Rep. Chellie Pingree’s (D-Maine) home on Capitol Hill to watch the results. Attendees described the event as “somber” and “downbeat.” Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Steve Israel of New York talked about turnout and the party’s effort to defend all incumbents — unlike when in 2010 the DCCC had to cut off some vulnerable members because of stretched resources.

By the time she left the event at 11 p.m., a number of high-profile Democrats in California and New York were in tight — and unexpected — battles for their careers.

Flanked by Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), her husband and Democratic staffers, Pelosi went back to the DCCC’s Capitol Hill headquarters. By 1 a.m., when races across the country were still turning against Democrats, Pelosi began drafting a letter to colleagues, asking for their support as minority leader. At the center of her pitch was the voter engagement drive.

Pelosi argues that House Democrats aren’t getting enough credit for preventing a total rout. Compared with losses in the Senate, the losses among incumbent House Democrats were better than expected, she says.

She also disputes that the White House had a “failure of politics” — a term Obama used after POLITICO’s interview with Pelosi — during the midterm that hurt Democrats.

Pelosi on the record On the 2014 midterms: We controlled the damage enormously. They were coming endlessly without one fact. endless money, no commitment to truth. They will say anything. And if that’s the arena you are in, my motto is don’t agonize, organize. And that’s what we ended up doing and we saved a lot of seats. On whether 2014 was a wave: We have to get it back to a place and I do believe that what happened the other night was not a wave. There was no wave of approval for Republicans. I wish them congratulations, they won the election, but there was no wave of approval for anybody. But there was an ebbing; there was an ebb tide, for us. On staying on as minority leader: I’m honestly here to protect the Affordable Care Act from the clutches of those who well, nonetheless, from whatever. On losing: Quite frankly, if we would have won, I would have thought about leaving. It’s the complete reverse. On the Democrats' messaging problem: I think there was so much going on in the world. But the point is it’s not a failure of his message, it was the extent of his success. Let’s say it in a more positive way. This president has accomplished many great things. Maybe people have a feeling that people know that, I don’t know but you know there is always the October eclipse. And we couldn’t catch a break. On winning back the House: We can win the majority without winning in the South, if that’s your point. The message that is important for everybody is financial stability and that’s not just catering to white male voters. Our message was about that: Jumpstart the middle class, stop tax breaks that send jobs overseas, keep the jobs here and build the infrastructure, when women succeed America succeeds, equal pay for equal work and invest in education. READ: More excerpts from POLITICO's exclusive interview with Pelosi

“I don’t think it was a failure of his message; it was the extent of his success. Let’s say it in a more positive way. This president has accomplished many great things,” Pelosi said of the president. “You know there is always an October eclipse. We couldn’t catch a break.”

Instead, Pelosi faulted a series of international crises — fighting in Ukraine, the terrorist group ISIL and the deadly outbreak of Ebola — for distracting the media and voters from Democrats’ economic message.

Pelosi’s outlook was wildly optimistic running into the homestretch. She insisted in July that Democrats were going to win 25 seats and take back the House. As Congress adjourned in September, Pelosi was still claiming that Democrats had a “60 percent” chance of winning the House, even when all the polls said the exact opposite. “The momentum is coming our way,” Pelosi said at the time. In private, members-only conference calls before Nov. 4, Pelosi was predicting Democrats would break even on Election Day.

Pelosi isn’t backing away from the liberal economic message that House Democrats based their campaign on, such as their focus on equal pay for women and an increased minimum wage. Those messages were poll tested, Pelosi said, and did well in districts that weren’t distracted by higher-profile statewide races.

“The message that is important for everybody is financial stability … our message was about that,” Pelosi said. “[It was] jump-start the middle class, stop tax breaks that send jobs overseas … [the idea that] when women succeed, America succeeds, equal pay for equal work and investments in education.”

Democrats were also hit by an onslaught of outside money, Pelosi said. Even in the minority, the DCCC had a huge fundraising advantage over the GOP, buoyed by Pelosi’s network of deep-pocketed donors. Yet despite outraising the National Republican Congressional Committee, Democrats couldn’t compete with a torrent of late spending by Republican super PACs.

“We controlled the damage enormously. They were coming endlessly without one fact. Endless money, no commitment to truth. They will say anything,” she said.

Pelosi isn’t nearly ready to give up on her tenure as the House Democrat’s top fundraiser and leader. The veteran lawmaker said she has no plans to leave or stay past 2016, but she said that to win back the House, Democrats will need access to her expansive donor network.

As for leaving after a tough loss, Pelosi said she is committed to helping Democrats regain the majority. In fact, Pelosi insisted that she would have only considered stepping down had Democrats won the House, returning her to the speaker’s chair.

Many expect her to serve until at least Obama leaves office in 2017 — in part to defend the 2010 Affordable Care Act from a Republican-led Congress.

Pelosi adamantly declined to say what she would do if Hillary Clinton won the White House in 2016, turning into a joke about her relationship with a presidential front-runner.

“You know what I’ve read? I’ve read that my lifelong dream is to serve as speaker with Hillary Clinton as president. So what? My lifelong dream …” Pelosi deadpanned.

House Democrats remain intensely loyal to Pelosi. She’s known for impressing donors with handwritten “thank you” notes and personal phone calls. Members say she pushes them not with threats or strong-arming but by asking them what they need from certain legislation or votes.

That bond with her rank and file explains why Pelosi has been able to stave off any challenge to her leadership post. It helps that no current Democrat could take up her fundraising network. Pelosi has raised more than $400 million since 2002.

She does it by attending roughly 750 fundraising and campaign events in the past two years, her office said.

“We would have lost more than 15 [seats] without Nancy Pelosi,” Israel said. “She’s the one who raised the money that gave us the resources to build the firewall that mitigated against even worse losses.”

With Republicans in the majority in both sides of the Capitol, Pelosi now faces a new Congress that will be more conservative than in the past four years of just a GOP-controlled House. Already, GOP hard-liners are demanding a series of votes on Republican-friendly legislation that will anger Democrats. Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), poised as the next Senate majority leader, already pledged to hold an Obamacare repeal vote early in the new session.

The 2010 health care law is one of the cornerstones of Pelosi’s legacy in the House — and the California Democrat said she would remain in leadership to defend the law at least for another term.

“I’m honestly here to protect the Affordable Care Act from the clutches of … whatever,” Pelosi said.

Anna Palmer contributed to this report.