Why has U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi embarked upon a series of trips to one hot spot after another – Kyiv, Taipei and finally Yerevan – in recent months?

The only plausible reason behind the sudden surge in high-octane diplomatic voyages can be traced to the forthcoming midterm polls in November.

On the personal front, by remaining in the limelight through this jet diplomacy, she wants to come across as a stout and active politician so as to lure her voters in the Florida constituency, while also indirectly trying to bolster the ebbing approval rating of Democrats. By appearing as the hawkish face of the Democrats, she is working as President Joe Biden's helping hand to offset the possibilities of an impending rout in the midterm polls.

Pelosi is facing two kinds of challenges at this juncture of her political career: one, how to save her seat in her home constituency, and down the line, how to retain the speakership in the face of growing discontentment among Democrats. In the midterm elections in November, all 435 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives and 35 of the 100 seats in the Senate will be contested. For the first time in the last two decades of her political career, Pelosi is facing a new kind of dilemma; she is facing tough competition in the Florida constituency at a time when there is a visible division among Democrats on the question of the continuation of her stint as speaker of the house. Her political career is seriously at stake now.

The recent polls of House Democrats suggest there is a building consensus that if they lose the majority, there would be inordinate pressure on Pelosi to throw in the towel, a prospect she is keenly aware of. But problem is that many members say they are also starting to contemplate how, if they maintain control of the House, it will eventually enable Pelosi to extend her time in power. Yet Democrats are visibly split about that possibility, with a palpable contingent eager for new leadership regardless of the outcome, even if she'd be the weighty favorite to retain the speakership.

In 2018, Pelosi, in principle agreed, without any sort of written agreement, with the dissident House Democrats to limit her tenure to four more years as speaker. However, multiple members, in their individual capacity as lukewarm-pro-Pelosi, are of the opinion that if the midterms go well for the Democratic party, a combination of dazed ecstasy and deference to both her fundraising skills and the weightage of female voters could compel them to reconsider extending her tenure. Whereas a vast majority of them are of the view that, in the event they retain the House majority, it would be perfect timing for Pelosi to call it a day on a very positive note.

'Change of leadership'

Interestingly, six years ago, Pelosi expressed her desire to quit if Hillary Clinton won the presidency and said she would announce a timetable for leaving the chair.

Not surprisingly, at the same time, a kind of fatigue and ennui has enveloped the majority of chronic House Democrats who are eager to see a "change of leadership" at all levels. But the octogenarian leaders of House Democrats seem to be quite oblivious to this "simmering revolt" against the old leadership among the backbenchers particularly, and they are still expressing their ambitions to replace Pelosi. Indeed, a quest for party overall is running deep inside Democratic Party and its impact is also reflected on the House Democrats. Even then, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, who, like Pelosi, are north of 80, have privately expressed their inclination to succeed her when she leaves. But they do not have many supporters of this idea inside the House. The urge to have a new leadership is picking up momentum in all layers of the Democratic Party – and perhaps this is what is pushing Pelosi to frantically try to salvage her position at the apparent twilight of her political career.

She also does not have much to offer to the younger voters. That is why, though Pelosi herself believes that it is her last run, she has not fully shut the door because she does not want to look like a lame duck as she moves across the country to raise staggering sums of money to safeguard her thin majority. Furthermore, after a very productive legislative session that witnessed enactment on major issues on climate change, infrastructure and gun violence legislation, she is hoping that her high-profile – and yet very controversial – visits to Taipei and Yerevan will help in winning some points in the midterm polls.

There are apparent reasons to believe that all her recent foreign trips had the full backing of Biden who is also equally worried about the prospects of the Democratic Party in the forthcoming polls. He "allowed" her to visit Taipei despite a last-minute telephone call from Chinese President Xi Jinping to stop the trip with a warning "not to play with fire."

Biden takes too many risks

Similarly, in the case of her trip to Yerevan, it seems Biden has deliberately maintained his silence over her highly acidic and vitriolic statements against Azerbaijan – and Türkiye. By letting a house speaker express her "personal" biases and bullish views on highly sensitive flashpoints like the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict, Biden is taking too many risks. He is trying to project Pelosi, who also needs the support of the Armenian-Americans who can tangibly affect the outcome of the results of her own constituency, as the hawkish face of the Democratic Party.

Pelosi’s controversial trip was specifically designed, apart from helping Pelosi to win her home seat, to test the nerves of Ankara and to lure Yerevan away from Moscow. Not surprisingly, Pelosi, who is reflexively trying to imitate the bullish rhetoric of former U.S. President Donald Trump, has drawn parallels between Armenia’s situation and that in Ukraine and Taiwan, portraying the conflict as part of a global struggle against tyranny and oppression. Here she is literally playing with fire.

Both Pelosi and Biden are quite confident that this type of belligerent diplomacy will help them in salvaging the midterm polls, but what they do not realize is the negative implications and long-term fallouts of such domestic compulsions on the position of the U.S. in the evolving global power equation.