A friend of mine asked me over the weekend: “What do you think of Schumer and Jeffries?” and I have to admit that I didn’t really have a good answer for them, other than to say that I have a wait-and-see attitude. At this point it seems likely that both Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries will ascend to (respectively) Senate minority leader and speaker of the House in the next Congress. Democrats managed such wide majorities in both the House and Senate that it is probably going to be impossible for any one Democratic faction to prevent the two from stepping into leading the new majorities for the next two years in Congress. The factions just aren’t big enough, and there don’t seem to be any prominent challengers putting their names forward to provide an alternative. So we’re probably stuck with both of them, for now.<\/p>\n
How will these two men exercise their leadership positions? That is unknown, at this point. But their performances to date haven’t been filling Democrats with a whole lot of confidence that they will rise to the occasion of fighting a lame-duck Republican president and passing bills that lay out to the American people a clear Democratic agenda for the future. But who knows? Maybe they’ll be surprisingly effective, given the unusual circumstances and the swollen majorities they will lead.<\/p>\n
Hakeem Jeffries, in particular, is largely untested. He took over from Nancy Pelosi, but has never been speaker, since his party has been in the minority in the House since the passing of the leadership torch. House minorities are famously powerless, since they have no filibuster to make them relevant to the legislative process. This hasn’t been as true with the current House makeup, since Speaker Mike Johnson has had such razor-thin GOP majorities to work with. Democrats have watched with glee while a handful of Republicans have derailed many proposals. When only two or three defections mean failure, it makes the speaker’s job a tough one indeed. And Jeffries has been doing a fairly effective job at keeping his caucus together and preventing many Democratic aisle-crossings under his watch, to his credit.<\/p>\n
But being speaker is a whole different thing than being House minority leader. Speakers set the agenda, decide which bills will get floor votes, and control committee assignments. How will Jeffries handle this newfound power? It’s still an open question.<\/p>\n
The complaints against Jeffries begin with the fact that he is seen as too deliberative — he often waits so long to make decisions that at times he misses the chance to strike while the iron is hot. He is also seen as too cautious, refusing to be vocal about some of the progressives’ biggest issues. He is still friendly with AIPAC, and perhaps too friendly to big corporate donors. This is part of the job of any House leader (raising money from donors), but there are a whole lot of strong feelings against the sources of some of these donations which have been building up among rank-and-file Democrats. Tech titans and big corporations are not exactly seen in the most positive light right now, to put it mildly (as well as shrinking Democratic support for Israel, which is a whole separate issue). If Jeffries is beholden to some of these influences, then he will fail to meet the moment with bold legislation to make fundamental changes.<\/p>\n
Democrats have long struggled with boldness versus incrementalism, and Jeffries seems firmly planted in the incrementalist camp. This is not what tens of millions of voters just voted for, however. So it will be interesting to see how Jeffries deals with the progressive wing of his party — whether he backs them when they introduce bills to make big changes, or whether he either throttles such attempts or supports watering them down to the point where it hardly matters whether they pass or not.<\/p>\n
Chuck Schumer has many of the same problems as Jeffries. Both of them are seen as rather boring, when the times seem to call for someone with a little more political passion. Both of them seem timid and unwilling to back bold changes, preferring instead to tinker around the edges of problems rather than going big. Schumer also has an additional problem, because he is now 75 years old (he will turn 76 in a few weeks) and he will be up for re-election in two years. He exemplifies the gerontocracy within the Democratic Party. The Senate has not had the same passing-of-the-torch generational change that the House went through when Pelosi finally stepped down, but it may be coming in 2028. Schumer has not yet said whether he’s running for re-election or not, and he has given no indication that he’s looking around for a successor to lead the Senate Democrats.<\/p>\n
Of course, the choice may not be his to make. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is contemplating challenging Schumer in 2028 if he makes a bid for re-election, or running for his seat if he does decide to step down. This is not a sure thing, since A.O.C. is also contemplating running for president as well. But whether she is the one to do so or not, it seems like a pretty safe bet that Schumer will face some kind of challenge from a much younger Democrat (and probably a much more progressive one as well).<\/p>\n
Both Jeffries and Schumer seem to have woken up a bit since the election, which is a good sign. Both are speaking a little more forcefully and are now backing bolder moves than they did before the votes were counted. Their problem is that both men can seem rather inauthentic when trying to exhibit passionate stances — they both seem like they are reading their lines off a script rather than personally feeling them deep down in their gut. And that is not<\/em> what the public seems to be looking for right now.<\/p>\n But again: who knows? Maybe they are<\/em> capable of rising to the moment that has been thrust upon them. We’ll see, in the first 100 days of the new Congress. Will Schumer and Jeffries explode out of the gate and push a sweeping legislative agenda designed to fundamentally alter the plight of working-class Americans in a big and noticeable way? Will they fight the good fight against Trump’s excesses and corruption? Will they do things that anger some of the big deep-pocket Democratic donors, because the electorate is demanding big changes? Will they prove an effective check and balance against a rogue executive branch? Will they be able to keep all the factions of the Democratic Party within their ranks happy (or “happy enough,” at least)? Will they be much stronger leaders than they have been in the past? And finally, can they actually convince both Trump and the Senate Republicans (a handful of them, at least) to go along with some of what they are proposing, so that at least some of the new Democratic agenda gets signed into law?<\/p>\n Or will they both prove to be gigantic disappointments to the tens of millions of voters who just gave the Democratic Party the best chance they’ve had in decades to effect big and sweeping changes? Will they squander this golden opportunity to the point where 2028 becomes a big Republican wave election year? Those are very real possible outcomes too.<\/p>\n We’re all going to have to wait and see. That’s not a very satisfying answer right now, I know. But at this point the Democrats don’t seem inclined to push either one of them out of their leadership positions, so Jeffries and Schumer are what we’re going to have to deal with, like it or not.<\/p>\n