USA: Nancy Pelosi relinquishes Democratic leadership in the House of Representatives

Democrat Nancy Pelosi has been a permanent presence in the House of Representatives for the past two decades. This is since he broke the glass ceiling as the chamber’s first speaker, and in a situation both favorable and unfavorable for his party: with a majority of seats and against Republicans in a clear minority. Regarded as the most powerful speaker in a century, she has moved up and down the stage, as electoral ups and downs have thrown her off balance, as in 2010, or re-elevated her, as That happened in 2018. The suffragette, excited and nervous, announced on Thursday that he would continue as a deputy in the chamber, but without any leadership aspirations. “It’s time to bring in a new generation of Democrats,” he said.

With the majority in Republican hands, the future of this former California housewife, a fact of legislative life, hung in the balance, but not just for electoral reasons. The violent assault on October 28 by her husband, Paul Pelosi, that sent her to the hospital with a fractured skull, will weigh more on her decision than her party’s fortunes in the election, as she herself announced. Intermediate Eve in an interview on CNN. Faced with those who believe that Paul Pelosi’s slow recovery will prompt her to leave politics, others say she does not intend to throw in the towel because of the actions of an overzealous conspiracy theorist who hammered her. husband when he could not find him to discharge his anger. However, she also pointed out that such an incident might discourage other women from entering politics. “When I came to the House, there were three Democratic women in 1987, today there are over 90,” she said in her speech.

The hypothesis of a possible retirement, almost forced apart by his 82 years, therefore threatens to put an end to his bulging service record, with critics on the progressive wing pointing to a weak point: his skepticism about the two processes of impeachment (political trial) for which Donald Trump was faced, which he resisted fearing unforeseen consequences. Pelosi feared that the process would open a thunder box and end dwindling cooperation among banks in a country increasingly polarized, more aggressive, with increasing political violence, as evidenced by the attack on her husband, Paul. , No. only.

Those years as head of the Chamber have not been easy for him. due to the Great Recession in his first term (2007–2011); in the second, from January 2019, for the impeachment of two Republicans; Attack on the Capitol by a Trumpist mob on January 6, 2021 and the Special Committee’s Investigation of the Assault. According to Rachel Bade and Karun Demirjian’s book Unchecked: The Untold Story Behind Congress’s Botched Impeachments of Donald Trump, Pelosi withdrew from impeachment with this same delay, not because she did not consider Republicans unworthy of investigation, but out of fear. was out of The test “became a political boomerang that could not be controlled once launched.” “They feared that by going after Trump they would jeopardize their hard-won majority, and could even give Trump a second term,” the authors explain in a review of their book published in Politico in October.