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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.