House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said she believes Hillary Clinton would be one of the best prepared candidates for the presidency, who “just happens to be a woman.”
Clinton told the crowd at Sen. Tom Harkin’s (D-Iowa) steak fry over the weekend that she’s “thinking” about running for the Oval Office. She brought along campaigner-in-chief Bill Clinton to the early caucus state.
“First of all, we have to find out if Hillary is going to run. She seemed very ready in Iowa at the steak fry,” Pelosi told MSNBC today.
“If she decides to run, which I think she will, she would be one of the best qualified people to enter the White House,” she said. “Really, she has been a senator and she has seen firsthand as first lady what the job entails. She has been secretary of state. She really brings so much experience to it.”
Pelosi said she doesn’t think it will hurt Clinton’s candidacy that she’s been hedging on the question for so long.
“I think she is handling it exactly correctly because we have an election coming up, midterms, most — many people don’t even know their midterm elections, they’re so focused on 2016 — but very, very important elections, hopefully to reelect a Democratic Senate to support President Obama to make strides in the House,” she said.
“And we always hope we can win and work hard for that. But it’s appropriate for any announcement of that kind to come after the midterms. She said next year is that — the impression you got from that is that she would make an announcement next year.”
Pelosi wouldn’t announce which midterm candidates Clinton may choose to help, “but it is in the public domain that she will be doing events — a couple of events for us, end of September, middle of October, and we are very excited about that.”
“I can just imagine the excitement that is generated from that,” she added.
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