Atlantic: Pelosi Will Announce She's Stepping Down Probably After Next Year's Midterm Elections

House Democratic Caucus Chair Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) on June 29, 2021 in Washington, DC.(Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will announce she’s stepping down “probably after next year’s midterm elections,” writes Edward-Isaac Dovere for The Atlantic in a piece about Hakeem Jeffries potentially taking the reins from the California Democrat.

“Her top deputies… aspire to her job, but they’re also in their early 80s, and most Democrats in and out of Congress are counting on them to step aside too. Of course, they all have stock responses denying that anyone is ever going anywhere,” the article says. “But the day is coming.”

Pelosi, 81, in 2018 called herself a “bridge to the next generation of leaders” and agreed to a deal that she would serve as speaker for no more than four years.

But she hasn’t completely shut the door, fueling speculation she could seek to prolong her 18-year tenure ruling the House Democratic caucus. She has also continued to raise money.

“Everyone assumes this is her last term, but no one knows for sure,” said a confidante who recently spoke with CNN. “People don’t realize how hard it was to win (the speaker’s race) last time.”

But the Atlantic in its article, titled “The Next Face of the Democratic Party,” says “pretty much every Democrat in Congress and beyond is confident that” Rep. Jeffries, D-N.Y., could end up being the first Black speaker of the House.

“Democratic members of Congress won’t talk about any of this publicly, as if Pelosi might suddenly appear and pull their hearts from their chests,” writes Dovere. “Jeffries, carefully, left it at telling me that growing up in a Black church taught him to respect and value his elders. But none of the two dozen Democratic members of Congress and party insiders I spoke with privately could present a serious alternative to Jeffries.”

Jeffries wouldn’t talk about the possibility with the Atlantic, instead focusing on what Democrats should do moving forward.

“He wants his party to speak in headlines—to learn from the Republicans, who have managed to win with ideas that consistently poll worse than theirs but are packaged better,” writes Dovere.