Pelosi: Let Me Lead You to The Edge of the Cliff. I'll Watch While You Jump.

That's pretty much the message for her fellow Democrats from San Fran Nan:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi urged her colleagues to back a major overhaul of U.S. health care even if it threatens their political careers, a call to arms that underscores the issue's massive role in this election year.

Lawmakers sometimes must enact policies that, even if unpopular at the moment, will help the public, Pelosi said in an interview being broadcast Sunday the ABC News program "This Week."
"We're not here just to self-perpetuate our service in Congress," she said. "We're here to do the job for the American people."

It took courage for Congress to pass Social Security and Medicare, which eventually became highly popular, she said, "and many of the same forces that were at work decades ago are at work again against this bill."

It's unclear whether Pelosi's remarks will embolden or chill dozens of moderate House Democrats who face withering criticisms of the health care proposal in visits with constituents and in national polls. Republican lawmaker unanimously oppose the health care proposals, and many GOP strategists believe voters will turn against Democrats in the November elections.

Pelosi, from San Francisco, is more liberal than scores of her Democratic colleagues. But she generally walks a careful line between urging them to back left-of-center policies and giving them a green light to buck party leaders to improve their re-election hopes.

Of course, Pelosi is from an extremely liberal district in San Francisco and could probably vote to make communism the official state religion and still not get tossed out. Her challenge to support the wildly unpopular Obamacare bill carries no personal threat to herself, other than finding herself out of the Speaker's chair in January. At this point I think she's resigned to that fact and figures she might as well go down taking as many of her fellow Dems as she can with her.