Nancy Pelosi

The political environment this year is often compared to the midterms of 2006, when Democrats won back control of Congress. After that election, Nancy Pelosi became the first female Speaker of the House. Twenty years later, Pelosi is in the final months of her historic political career. She joined Amna Nawaz to discuss her time in office and what to expect on election night.

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This election cycle has been compared to the midterms of 2006, when Democrats won back control of Congress and, in an historic first, elected Nancy Pelosi to be the first female speaker of the House. That was 20 years ago.

Today, Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi is in the final months of her political career. And like she's done every election night since 2016, Speaker Pelosi joins us now.

Madam Speaker, welcome back. Thank you for continuing this tradition with us.

I want to begin, of course, with your predictions. How big a majority do you think Democrats can win in the House tonight? And will you win control of the Senate?

Well, thank you, Amna, for the opportunity to share some thoughts with you once again on election night.

One thing I will say, following up on your previous guests, be not afraid to voters. Just go out and vote. Hakeem Jeffries has worked very hard to do three things, one, to win the election, two, to protect the election, and, three, to show the people what will happen once we do.

So, your vote is protected, go vote. Whether it's litigation, whether it's legislation, whether it's communication or mobilization, we're ready. We're ready for anything they might come up with.

Always good to underscore that. You're absolutely right.

What will you think will happen tonight now?

I think, tonight, we will have a big victory. It will be many seats in the House of Representatives. I put -- I want 30. But the fact is, they will be very slim victories. So I don't want anybody to think, oh, well, you have won, so let's move on to other things.

No, we -- every race will be close, but there will be many of them. You mentioned 2006. And, in 2006, he who shall be nameless was at 44 percent favorable. Now it's -- 45 percent favorable. Now it's 38, a seven-points difference. And, in 18, we won 40 seats, 31 of them in Trump districts.

So now he's down to 38. We expect to have a big Democratic victory in the House and hopefully also in the Senate. In my own district, I'm supporting Connie Chan. And, for me, what is interesting is, when I went to Congress, there were 12 women, Democratic women out of 435 people, 12 Democratic women.

So my passion over the years has been to increase that number. And I'm so happy to still be in Congress for the election, but we will go over 100, and hopefully Connie Chan will take us there as well. So, we're prepared for victory.

We have certainly seen some big changes on that front. You're absolutely right.

I do want to ask you about some specific races, though, because Democrats have been sort of reeling from some late-breaking stories in Michigan, in particular, in the Senate race. I'm sure you were tracking Haley Stevens on Sunday stepping in after she lost the Democratic primary to actually endorse the Republican candidate there, Mike Rogers.

He's running against Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic nominee. What do you think -- or how do you think, rather, that impacts the race? Will that hurt El-Sayed?

By all reports that I have from Michigan -- and we have races there too in the House -- of course, we're concerned about the Senate and the governor's race -- it's going to be a landslide in Michigan. We will win that Senate seat in Michigan.

Unfortunately, and with all the respect in the world that I have for my former colleague Haley Stevens, this distraction from what we should be talking about is, what are the Democrats going to do when they win, rather than why did Haley Stevens change her support in that race?

So let's not be distracted by that. That was then. This is now, today. The Democrats will win big in Michigan, and it will not -- it will not affect whether we win the House -- excuse me -- the Senate and the House, as a matter of fact, as well.

It's a pretty exciting night. It's going to be a big victory for us.

To that point, as you mentioned, what Democrats should prioritize if they do win control of both chambers -- rather, in the House especially, I know you have supported Hakeem Jeffries to be the eventual speaker if the Democrats do win the majority there.

I'm sure you have seen a number of sort of anti-establishment candidates, though, reserve their judgment and say they're not ready to support him to be speaker. They say they're frustrated with the status quo. They say Democrats and leaders aren't fighting hard enough.

Hakeem Jeffries will be a very strong speaker of the House, and he will be the speaker of the House.

And with all due respect for all members, they represent their district. Their job title and their job description are one and the same, representative. So we respect that. But we also respect the consensus of the House Democrats, again, respecting everybody's point of view, but with enough votes, just win big, baby.

And that's the answer to all this. I always had that. Everybody -- I was always fighting. But, nonetheless, we always prevailed and we got our votes and we won, even when we were down to like two- or three-vote majority. So Hakeem will be fine with that.

I think that more is made of those differences. Those people are wonderful. They're welcome to Congress, but they're not going to hold up a Democratic agenda to reduce the cost of living, to make sure that people have access to health care and overturn what Trump did to take a trillion dollars out of Medicaid, half-a-trillion out of Medicare, hundreds of billions out of food for children, to give tax cuts to the richest people.

And one place to go get the money is ICE, which has a bigger budget than the Marine Corps, so -- and then, third of all, to see -- people see the connection between corruption and their well-being too.

So, again, he has an agenda that he's put forth. We had six for '06 in '06, and he has three right now, but they're very large -- a very large agenda. And for the first 100 days, he will -- people will see the difference very clearly...

I just want to ask you before -- I have a matter of seconds left, but I wanted to put this to you because this is your last election cycle as a lawmaker. You are retiring at the end of your term in January. I wonder if you have thought about what it will be like when you are not a member of Congress and you're watching election results come in, in the next cycle. Have you thought about what that would feel like?

Not too much. I'm just right still in this fight right now to win this election. But I will always be supportive of Democrats because that's what I was born into, and that's what I believe.

And it's about really never more important right now for us to support working families, working families with all the -- in my district, there are people who make in two weeks what some of their employees make in a lifetime. So working with our friends in labor and the rest, we want to have an agenda for working families.

I will also be teaching at Berkeley, and that's not about politics. That's about policy and training young leaders for the future.

It is not. You're right. You're right. And we do hope that you can come back and join us again some time very soon. We will have to leave it there for now.

Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi, always a pleasure to speak with you. Thank you.

My pleasure. Thank you, Amna. Thank you, Geoff.

Amna Nawaz serves as co-anchor and co-managing editor of PBS News Hour.

Stephanie Kotuby is the Senior Editorial Producer of PBS NewsHour and the Executive Producer of Washington Week with the Atlantic.

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