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Nancy Pelosi is about to deliver what may be the biggest foreign policy win of the Obama presidency.
Her confidence rests in a fat, three-ring binder she held in her hands Wednesday as she sat in her conference room just off the House floor, constituting a virtual firewall preventing both majority Republicans and wavering Senate Democrats from scuttling a historic nuclear deal with Iran.
As House Republicans delayed a vote scheduled Thursday to disapprove the deal amid a last-minute conservative rebellion, inside the binder were more than 125 public statements of support from House Democrats, constructed over months of hand-holding and political orchestration by the former House speaker from San Francisco, now minority leader. As the day progressed Wednesday, the number rose to 135.
Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is conducting an aggressive August campaign to rally House Democrats behind President Obama's landmark nuclear deal with Iran.
The minority leader is hitting the phones to whip on-the-fence Democrats behind the agreement in hopes of building the numbers proponents may need to seal the deal in the face of GOP efforts to scuttle it.
That Democratic backing might not be necessary, as Senate GOP leaders are struggling to find enough Democratic votes to defeat a filibuster and send the disapproval measure to Obama.
But Pelosi is leaving nothing to chance.
She staged a full Caucus conference call in the second week of August, which featured a discussion of the Iran deal.
She's reaching out to undecided Democrats to pitch the importance of the agreement in preventing Iran from building nuclear arms.
Nancy Pelosi couldn't stop the war in Iraq, but she's determined to stop one with Iran.
In an interview with The Chronicle, the San Francisco Democrat and House minority leader called an impending congressional vote on a nuclear pact with Iran "as important as any vote members will take," comparing it with the 2002 votes that took the nation to war with Iraq, an action she strenuously opposed.
With Washington all but evacuated in August, Pelosi is relentlessly building a fail-safe mechanism to ensure that the Iran deal clears Congress despite unanimous opposition by majority Republicans in the House and Senate — and by a significant number of Democrats who are uneasy with the deal.
House Democrats have the votes, if necessary, to uphold President Barack Obama's veto of a resolution against his Iran nuclear deal, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said Wednesday.
The California Democrat said that if such a vote were held today there would be enough support among House Democrats for Obama to prevail.
That would take 146 House Democrats, and fewer than 60 have publicly declared their support so far.
In an interview with The Associated Press Pelosi declined to disclose her private vote count but expressed confidence in the outcome.
"The president's veto would be sustained" if the vote were held today, Pelosi said, adding she hopes it doesn't get to that point. "But I feel very confident about it."
House Democratic leaders are increasingly confident they have the votes necessary to sustain any presidential veto of GOP-backed legislation that would effectively scuttle the Iran nuclear deal.
Despite some lingering skepticism in parts of the caucus, leadership sources pointed to the 152 Democrats already on the record supporting the earlier framework of the nuclear deal as evidence that House Democrats will likely do their part to keep President Barack Obama's landmark nonproliferation deal alive.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, who wields significant influence in the caucus, on Thursday announced her "strong support" for the deal.
Since the shooting in Charleston, S.C. that killed nine people at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal, Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.) said America has for some reason become focused on the symbol of the Confederate battle flag.
"It's a very strong symbol, but the fact still remains that though this young man worshiped that symbol, he carried out his desolate act with a gun," he said of the alleged shooter, Dylann Storm Roof, during press conference Wednesday.
With Democratic Leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Rep. Mike Thompson (D-Calif.) and Dan Gross, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, Clyburn called on Congress to expand Brady background checks and vote on the bill Thompson and Peter King (R-N.Y.) introduced earlier this year.