It appears that John Boehner convinced Nancy Pelosi that he could supply the required majority for the debt ceiling deal:
I also think, though, that passing something and getting it over with and moving on was necessary and compared to default it is preferable because default would really lose a lot of jobs. That is my way of saying, I don’t think this is the best path we could have taken. And especially I’m unhappy about the fact that this was developed with a premise that the Republicans would have the 218. Since they didn’t we should’ve had more influence.
I was in all the meetings, I’m not saying that isn’t the case. But if we had days, instead of backed up to hours, we could have said ‘you don’t have the votes, let’s go back in and how do we move this way in order to cut some of those cuts and have a better bill and get the votes.’ So I think we could’ve done better. I think they were successful at just prolonging it to the last minute so that we didn’t have that option and it was default or no default.
While I do think that Pelosi is the best of the Democratic leaders in Washington, it’s clear that she got played.
It was clear from early in this debate that there would have to be a significant number of Democratic votes for this to pass. The Teabaggers were saying that they would vote against this under any circumstances, and Eric Cantor doing his level best to sabotage Boehner, because he wants to displace him as speaker. (Not gonna happen. Republicans will never vote to put a Jew 3rd in line to the presidency)
Not one of her finer moments.