Scan the lapels of the blazers and shirts on show among the crowd promenading through what has been a week of Sinatran dreamy weather in Chicago, and you might spot one of the most subtle and evocative political pins of this year’s Democratic convention. It’s an ode to the poster of Francis Ford Coppola’s timeless epic The Godfather except that the face of Nancy Pelosi has replaced that of Marlon Brando, and she wears a red rose on her own lapel. The pin is headed The Godmother.
As a tribute, it is open to multiple interpretations and the unflappable Pelosi would doubtlessly bat each of them away with a laugh. The steely grace and eloquence with which the 84-year-old retains a formidable, deep influence within the Democratic corridors of power has long been evident. But she used it to devastative effect in the final, declining days of Joe Biden’s presidential nomination, when the polls showed a campaign flaming out of the sky and the increasingly isolated president repeated that he was going nowhere. Pelosi publicly urged Biden to do whatever he thought best for the party.
Nobody quite said, “I’m gonna make him an offer he can’t refuse”. But by the time Biden transformed the entire superstructure of this election campaign by removing himself from the equation, it was clear that his staunch allies, led by Pelosi and Charles Schumer, had, through a series of coded hints, made their wishes clear. In the days since, Pelosi has reaffirmed what sounds like a genuine love for the exiting Biden while reiterating an almost glacial belief that she has no regrets about what happened.
“I have my relationship with the president, and I just wanted to win this election. So, if they’re upset, I’m sorry for them, but the country is very happy,” she told The Washington Post on Monday, hours before Biden would give his farewell address to the convention.
“I don’t know who they are, but that’s their problem.”
It seems like ancient history now, but it is worth rewinding the clock a few months to what turned out to be Biden’s most enjoyable few weeks of 2024 in the White House. This was March, the weather turning, and a successful St Patrick’s-week shindig preceded by his State of the Union address on March 7th. Against expectations, Biden had delivered a rousing and fiery speech in front of the deeply divided House and Senate members and those members of the supreme court who turned up for the ceremonial address. Afterwards, the sustained applause on the Democratic side of the room was thunderous. Kamala Harris, generally then depicted as an underwhelming running mate who might hamper Biden’s chances, beamed in delight. Schumer held his arms aloft like a pugilist from the Jack Johnson era and led the chants of four more years. And not far away, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the leading light of the Democratic left, stood with the other representatives and gave the 81-year-old a sustained standing ovation. Nobody knew it then, but the evening was the high point of Biden’s re-election campaign.
Four years ago, in the run-up to the 2020 election, Ocasio-Cortez had famously laid out the ideological chasm between the Democratic moderate mainstream, as led by Biden, and the progressive left, for whom she had come blazing out of the New York electoral district of Queens two years earlier. “Oh God,” she said in an interview delivering a line that landed like a hammer blow. “In any other country, Joe Biden and I would not be in the same party, but in America we are.”
At that year’s Covid-restricted convention, Ocasio-Cortez was given a brief speaking slot and devoted her time to what was a wish list reflecting the causes she championed. Flash forward four years and she was back on the stage. But now, speaking on the Monday night of what was Biden’s valedictory, the New Yorker underlined her potency as a future star and potential leader of the Democratic Party with a short, vivid speech encapsulating her life story and values.
“Six years ago, I was taking omelette orders as a waitress in New York City. I didn’t have health insurance,” she told the crowd.
“My family was fighting off foreclosure and we were struggling with bills after my dad passed away unexpectedly from cancer. Like millions of Americans, we were just looking for an honest shake. And we were tired of cynical politics that seemed blind to the realities of working people. It was then, only through democracy and community that the good people of the Bronx and Queens chose someone like me to [represent] them in Congress.”
After that stunning congressional win in 2018, her impact at national level was instantaneous and it was elevated into an unofficial movement after Ocasio Cortez posted a photograph of herself along with other newly elected Democratic congresswomen – Ilhan Omar (Minnesota), Ayanna Pressley (Massachusetts) and Rashida Tlaib (Michigan) with a one-word caption: Squad.
The title stuck and captured the attention of media and public alike. For the first two years of the Biden administration, Ocasio-Cortez represented the impatient, youthful leftist voice and temperament of the party who drew a sharp rebuke from Pelosi in a New York Times interview after she and the other three original squad members voted against a border-funding bill.
“All these people have their public whatever and their Twitter world,” Pelosi said. “But they didn’t have any following. They’re four people and that’s how many votes they got.”
It was a sharp knuckle-rap from a master practitioner of the daily trudge and selfless nature of legislation. But by then Ocasio Cortez had co-chaired, at Biden’s invitation, a taskforce formed to outline a comprehensive set of policy recommendations on immigration, healthcare, climate and immigration. It was an attempt by Biden, ever the negotiator, to appease the more radical voices within the party. Since then, the New Yorker has walked the shaky tightrope between championing the left-wing causes that first drew her to politics while falling more into step with the centrist majority of the party – and becoming one of its most recognisable representatives. The thaw with Pelosi has been slow: she was quoted in Ryan Grim’s The Squad: AOC and the Hope of Political Revolution admitting to the sense of liberation she felt after Pelosi stepped down, in 2023, as Democratic House leader after two decades in the role.
“I thought things would get worse,” she was quoted as saying in a text.
“I thought a lot of my misery was due to leadership more broadly having a thing against me. But ... my life has completely transformed. It’s crazy. And it’s that that made me realise it was kind of just [Pelosi] the whole time.”
This summer, as the Democratic Party was threatening to fracture over divided opinion of whether Biden should go or honour his primary campaign win and proceed as nominee, Ocasio-Cortez, Bernie Sanders and other members of the left were among those who supported him to the last in the belief he represented their best chance of more radical reforms. By the time she took the stage on Monday night, Ocasio-Cortez had become a source of disappointment to many leftists who believe she has diluted her stance to the degree where she is just another Democrat now. But her speech was both an endorsement of Harris and a compelling illustration of her personal communication skills.
“And Chicago, we have to help her win,” she said of Harris.
“Because we know that Donald Trump would sell this country for a dollar if it meant lining his own pockets and greasing the palms of his Wall Street friends. And I for one am tired of hearing about how a two-bit union buster thinks of himself as more of a patriot than the woman who fights every single day to lift working people out from under the boots of greed treading on our way of life. The truth is, Don, you cannot love this country if you only fight for the wealthy and big business. Everyday Americans like bar tenders and factory workers and fast-food cashiers who punch a clock and are on their feet. All day in some of the toughest jobs out there. Every day since I got elected Republicans have attacked me by saying I should go back to bar tending. Let me tell you, I am happy to, any day of the week, because there is nothing wrong with working for a living. Imagine having leaders in the White House who understand that.”
It was one of those thunderous addresses that seemed to shrink the cavernous arena and turn it into a more intimate and soulful setting. She was the first speaker of the week to call for a ceasefire in Gaza – but was careful also to make a call for “bringing the hostages home”. And on Tuesday, at an event at the Union League club in Chicago, Ocasio-Cortez had reached the point where she was able to praise the elder figureheads of the party.
“What we saw last night and what we are seeing this moment is a real passing of the torch. Not only with the tremendously selfless decision that Joe Biden made. Nancy Pelosi also gracefully handed the torch to Hakeem Jeffries in the House, also making history as the first black speaker.”
When it came to Pelosi’s turn to speak, on Wednesday evening, she was introduced by comedian Mindy Kaling as a woman who “was doing brat before brat was brat”.
“Please welcome the Mother of Dragons, Nancy Pelosi.”
The colourful title was the closest the address came to any rhetorical flourish. Not for Pelosi the soaring prose or personal reminisces that filled so much of the speaking time over successive nights. She was all business. “On January 20th, 2021 with the inauguration of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris we established one of the most successful presidencies of modern times and we quickly proved that Democrats deliver,” she began, before outlining the accomplishments of the past four years and concluding with “Thank you Joe”. That was about as sentimental as Pelosi was willing to get, instead moving swiftly to where her focus has always been: the next task, the next electoral win. She spoke for less than six minutes, and her message was politely insistent on the party, the party, the party.
“We returned to the Capitol that very same night,” she said, returning to the events of January 6th, 2021.
“We insisted on certifying the election results on the floor of the House and the Senate and we demonstrated to America and to the world that American democracy prevailed. The parable of January 6th reminds us that our democracy is only as strong as the courage and commitment of those entrusted with its care. And we must choose leaders who believe in free and fair elections,” she said.
“The choice couldn’t be clearer. Those leaders are vice-president Harris and governor Walz.”
Set against three nights of heady, passionate sermons, Pelosi’s turn was strikingly formal and after all those decades as the most powerful woman on Capitol Hill, she remains an inscrutable figure within her own party. This has been an historic convention for the Democratic Party, a symbolic torch passing and an attempt to overcome the internal tensions that marked the Biden era. They leave Chicago filled with a campaign framed around the word “Joy” and a surge in belief and optimism that the sudden sense of harmony will carry them through November and back for a second term. And if Pelosi’s words were few, her needlework was all over it.
Can Kamala win? - with Fintan O'Toole and Suzanne Lynch
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