Somewhere beneath the earth, the denizens of hell must be putting on parkas and mittens, because Nancy Pelosi has announced she’s giving up her post in the Democratic leadership.

Pelosi’s announcement last Thursday that she won’t be standing for the party’s leadership next year has been a long time coming. The House speaker had vowed more than once that she’d pass her post on to a new generation of leadership, to the point of making an informal 2018 deal with impatient Democratic critics in the House that she’d only stand for four more years. The pressure has only increased as the ranks of the party’s leadership have grown increasingly ancient. Though Pelosi framed this decision as her choice, just last week she was holding out the option of running for another term. The truth is that Pelosi probably had to end her tenure gracefully, or risk capping her career with an acrimonious fight within her party that she wouldn’t have necessarily won.

President Joe Biden has already declared Pelosi “the most consequential Speaker of the House of Representatives in our history,” and tributes from past and present lawmakers have come pouring in, extolling Pelosi’s historymaking tenure, her accomplishments, and her totally epic clapbacks against Donald Trump. But step away from the soft-focus lighting for a minute, and how do we actually evaluate Pelosi’s time as speaker?