House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said Tuesday she is unbothered by Democrats campaigning in swing districts by pledging not to support her for speaker.
Her message to such candidates, channeling iconic former Oakland Raiders owner Al Davis: “Just win, baby.”
Pelosi (D-Calif.), in an interview with POLITICO Playbook authors Anna Palmer and Jake Sherman, was bullish on the chances for her party to take over the majority in the House when voters go to the polls for this November’s midterm elections.
She said she was undeterred by the seemingly growing trend of Democratic candidates who have either pledged not to support her for the party’s leadership or who have been conspicuously noncommittal about their support for Pelosi.
“I think if they have to do that to win the election, I’m all for winning,” she said. “I think many of them are saying we need new leadership. I don’t take offense at that.”
“I’m okay. Just win, baby,” she said, misattributing the quote made famous by Davis and his Oakland Raiders to the NBA’s Golden State Warriors, the league’s defending champions who are currently in the midst of a playoff run.
The most prominent example thus far of a Democrat running away from Pelosi and winning came earlier this year in a special election outside Pittsburgh, where Rep. Conor Lamb won in a Congressional district where President Donald Trump won in 2016 by nearly 20 percentage points.
Lamb, who has pledged not to support Pelosi for Democratic leadership, appears to be part of a larger trend. The Washington Post reported last week that there are already 10 Democratic candidates for this year’s elections who have made pledges similar to Lamb’s and at least 10 more who have notably declined to express support for Pelosi.
Nonetheless, the San Francisco Democrat spoke Tuesday as if she planned to regain her role as House speaker, a position she previously held from 2007 to 2011, should her party win the majority this November. She said she had planned to retire in the wake of a Hillary Clinton victory in 2016 and opted to remain in her role so that there would be “a woman at the table.”
Asked about the prospect of impeaching Trump, something some in her caucus have agitated for should Democrats take over the House majority, Pelosi suggested such a step would be divisive. In the absence of something spurring bipartisan calls for impeachment on par with Watergate, Pelosi suggested she would not support impeaching the president and that talk of such a move is a “distraction.”
“I’ve just said to folks ‘I wish you wouldn’t.’ You can talk about it in your district. In my district, it’s a very popular issue but it’s not the path that we should go on,” she said. “I’m not walking away from impeachment for political reasons and I’m not walking toward it for political reasons. I just think it’s divisive and I think what we should do is always try to unify.”