Following a roughly three-week pressure campaign that launched in the wake of his disastrous late June debate performance, President Joe Biden announced that he had ended his bid for a second term in the White House on Sunday.

It has now been revealed by multiple sources that former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) played a critical and central role in pushing Biden to make that decision to drop out, according to leftist outlet Slate.

That successful persuasive effort, some might argue, could be one of Pelosi's greatest achievements in her decades-long political career, in that it likely forestalled certain impending defeat for Democrats up and down the ballot in November and, at least in theory, gave the party a fighting chance to maintain control of the White House.

Pelosi's "critical role" in ousting Biden from the race

NBC News reported Monday on former Speaker Pelosi's "critical role" behind the scenes in "delicately nudging" President Biden to withdraw from the presidential race that so many Democratic donors and lawmakers had become convinced that he was destined to lose to former President Donald Trump.

Over the three weeks that elapsed from the debate until Biden dropped out, Pelosi balanced her public support of the increasingly embattled president with her private urging of other Democratic lawmakers and donors to speak out openly against his continued campaign as well as her own reported private conversations with Biden about the grim reality of his situation.

The apparent final push came on Friday when more than a dozen congressional Democrats publicly called for Biden to exit the race, and one unnamed member from a "vulnerable" district told the outlet, "That groundswell on Friday of members calling for him to step down was all Nancy’s doing."

Pelosi told Biden they could "do this the easy way or the hard way"

To be sure, as NBC News noted, President Biden had been resistant to the effort to dislodge him as the presumptive Democratic nominee and insisted on multiple occasions that he had made his decision to remain in the race and continue his run for a second term.

One particularly key moment came, however, when former Speaker Pelosi appeared on MSNBC's "Morning Joe," Biden's favorite show, and essentially ignored what Biden had previously said and acted as if a decision had yet to be made on whether he would stay or go.

That move likely made it clear to both Biden and all other Democratic lawmakers and donors that his purported decision to continue his run would not be accepted.

As one anonymous Democrat told Politico for its own story detailing how and why Biden finally dropped out of the race, "Nancy made clear that they could do this the easy way or the hard way," and added, "She gave them three weeks of the easy way. It was about to be the hard way."

Indeed, the Politico report seemed to suggest that, had Biden not withdrawn from the race when he did, she was prepared to step up the pressure campaign through other surrogates, if not even openly call for him to drop out herself -- something she was able to avoid doing.

Pelosi's latest and greatest achievement?

Slate surmised of the former Speaker's achievement, "Pelosi was wise enough to not just look at the polls and conclude that the math wouldn’t work out for Biden but to look at Biden and ask what it would take to get him to budge."

"She stood by him publicly, understanding that openly opposing him might mean losing his ear," the outlet continued. "She showed him the data and, along with some of her closest allies, pressed him to consider his legacy, his realistic chances, and the growing opposition within his own party."

"The strategy worked. The president was given a path to step down with his dignity intact. The American public was given a real opportunity to avoid a second Trump presidency and all the democratic backsliding it could bring. And Nancy Pelosi got the one thing she always wants: a way to win," Slate added.