House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has had a long run. At 77 — and a multi-millionaire — the California Democrat could ride off into the sunset.
But the former Speaker of the House said Sunday she’s not going anywhere.
“Self-promotion is a terrible thing, but somebody has to do it,” Pelosi said on Fox News Sunday. “I am a master legislator. I know the budget to the nth degree.”
There have been rumblings that Democrats want to replace its aging leadership before the 2018 mid-term elections. Right now, there is no leader of the party, with Hillary Clinton gone and Sen. Bernie Sanders — even older than Pelosi — on the sidelines.
There have been a few coup attempts, but none that reached critical mass. Still, things have gotten worse for Democrats who have lost all four special elections this year and are struggling to find a message that resonates with working-class Americans.
Pelosi says she realizes the party has to be more than just hating on President Donald Trump. “What is important is that we have a better deal. We have unity in the party. We are proud of the fact that the party has diverse thinking and we can accommodate that.”
Pelosi rarely appears on networks that are not liberal. And she took a bit of a beating from the Fox News host, The Daily Caller reports.
“You call for higher wages, lower prescription drug costs, job training, infrastructure,” Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace said to Pelosi. “I’m not saying any of that is wrong, what I am saying is none of it is new. We’ve been hearing it for years. We heard it from the Democrats and Hillary Clinton in 2016 and you lost.”
Pelosi didn’t disagree with Wallace, instead highlighting the fact that Congressional Democrats are in charge of the messaging for the first time since 2006 and that they, unlike Clinton in 2016, won.
“We’re going to hear it [Democratic messaging] with more clarity,” Pelosi explained. “For the first time since 2006, Congressional Democrats are in charge of the message. In ’06, we were in charge. We won.”
“We had a democratic president in ’08,” Pelosi said. “Now it is our turn to win the Congress for the American people.”
Maybe Pelosi can team up with Sanders for the 2020 ticket. Their motto can be “We’ve been alive for a combined 159 years and we’re bound to get something right eventually!”