Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who has led the House Democrats for two decades, is expected to address her plans for the next Congress at midday after Republicans captured the seats required to take a narrow majority.
The question of Pelosi’s future has hung heavily over Democrats.
Democrats are bracing on Thursday for Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the first woman to hold the post and their leader for the past two decades, to announce her plans for the new Congress.
A day after Democrats lost control of the House of Representatives, confirming that Ms. Pelosi’s historic tenure as speaker would come to an end in January, the question of what she would do next hung heavily over Democrats, who have been awaiting a decision from her before engaging in any public jockeying over who might succeed her at the helm of their caucus.
Ms. Pelosi pledged in 2018 to limit herself to four more years as her party’s leader, but has recently equivocated about whether she would honor that, and has been quietly gauging her support within Democratic ranks. Many of her colleagues have privately noted that Ms. Pelosi, 82, would be unlikely to seek to stay in her position if she found she did not have the votes to do so, and equally unlikely to leave if she believed she had the backing to hold on.
In recent days, some people close to her have suggested that Ms. Pelosi might find a way to step aside voluntarily, such as leaving leadership but remaining in Congress in a sort of emeritus role that would allow her to offer counsel to her colleagues and support the agenda of President Biden, 79, whom she has urged to run for re-election in 2024.
Such an arrangement would allow Ms. Pelosi to manage her own exit from the political scene while passing the torch to a new generation of leaders. Many Democrats have argued for years that was long overdue: Three octogenarians currently run the House.
Ms. Pelosi hinted at the possibility in interviews last weekend, but said she would not make any announcements about her future until after all the votes were counted and control of the House was determined. That happened on Wednesday night, and Democrats — who have been effectively frozen in place awaiting her decision — expected her to break her silence on Thursday.
Until then, nobody has been willing to step forward to challenge Ms. Pelosi’s iron grip on the caucus or risk crossing a figure who is well known for holding grudges against opponents. Should she step aside, it would raise questions about whether the other two members of her leadership team — Representatives Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the 83-year-old majority leader, and Jim Clyburn of South Carolina, the 82-year-old whip — would also exit their posts.
That could pave the way for the ascension of a younger group of leaders in the party — Representatives Hakeem Jeffries of New York, Katherine Clark of Massachusetts and Pete Aguilar of California — that has been waiting in the wings.
Aides to Ms. Pelosi, who is famous for keeping her own counsel, have warned that nobody knows her thinking about what’s next and that it is foolish to try to guess. But people close to her have also noted that the landscape has changed since she pledged not to seek to lead her party past January 2023, and that she is unlikely to leave Congress just weeks after voters in her district elected her to another two-year term.
Unlike 2010, when Ms. Pelosi was blamed for Democratic losses in the midterm elections, Democrats are looking for someone to credit for their stronger-than-expected showing in an election cycle in which the Republicans promised a “red wave” that never crested.
A politically motivated attack that severely wounded her husband, Paul Pelosi, in which Ms. Pelosi was the target, as well as an election that Democrats view as a rejection of extremism by voters, has also bolstered Ms. Pelosi in the eyes of many of her colleagues.
NYT