Did Nancy Pelosi Get The Message?

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To adapt, she will have to understand that today's opponent could be tomorrow's ally. Few in Congress have such a memory for slights and betrayals. She still bristles at the fact that when she first went to Washington, many in the Democratic establishment didn't take her seriously and opposed her march up the leadership. As she told TIME earlier this year, "They couldn't control me, so they tried to take me down." When her former House colleague Martin Frost was running to head the Democratic National Committee after the 2004 elections, she lobbied against him with a determination that all sides attributed to Frost's challenging her for Democratic leader two years before. Asked about those conflicts, Pelosi refused to discuss them specifically but said, "Anybody who's ever dealt with me knows not to mess with me."

And yet she is capable of bringing people back into her fold. When Frost's wife, a retired Army major general, was buried in September, he was touched that Pelosi interrupted her frantic campaign schedule to attend the service at Arlington National Cemetery and then walked more than a mile behind the caisson and riderless horse that took Kathryn Frost to her grave. Afterward, Pelosi asked Frost to visit her in her office. She appreciated the work he was doing to help Democratic candidates, she told him, and added that if the party won the House, she would be turning to him for more. "She could not have been more gracious," Frost says. "I was very appreciative. Whatever she needs me to do, I will do."

Still, pulling together is not something Democrats do well--even in victory. As the Pelosi-Hoyer-Murtha battle was heating up, Democratic consultant James Carville and pollster Stan Greenberg--both of whom are close to the Clintons--loudly called on Howard Dean to resign as Democratic chairman, saying the party could have won more House seats if he had spent its money more wisely. Liberal bloggers were slamming Emanuel, head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, saying he was taking credit for their victories. And the Blue Dog Coalition, a group of the most conservative House Democrats, was mounting a rear-guard campaign to save Harman's post at the Intelligence Committee. Savoring a team victory, it seems, is something the party has yet to get the hang of.

•THE BALTIMORE EFFECT

Even as Democrats scratched their heads over Pelosi's judgment last week, they knew where it was coming from. "This isn't San Francisco," said a former Democratic-leadership aide. "This is Baltimore." The latter is where Pelosi grew up and where she got her first lessons in politics, from the best teacher anyone could want. When Nancy D'Alesandro was a child, her father used to collect yellow sheets of paper that were stacked and stapled together at the end of each week. They were called the "favor file." That was the way Baltimore's legendary Mayor Thomas D'Alesandro Jr.--later known as "Big Tommy," to distinguish him from his namesake son who also became mayor--kept track of who had been given a job or some other benevolence. The record always came in handy at election time. From the age of 13, his only daughter Nancy took charge of the desk in their home on Albemarle Street, where people came to tell their stories and ask for help.