For years, pundits, the press and even some members of her own party had treated her as little more than an inconvenience. They fretted about her age and her polarizing public persona. They argued that, however skilled her leadership, she was a liability for the Democrats, and some called her selfish for clinging to her position in the party leadership rather than making way for a “fresher” face. When she pointed out that she was good at her job—“I am a master legislator,” she didn’t mind saying, because nobody else would—she only earned more ridicule: arrogant, delusional, tone-deaf, out of touch. Even after she helped engineer a landslide victory in the November 2018 midterm elections, the grumbling continued, and some Democrats tried to deny her the speakership.