The incoming House Democratic majority will run to roughly 260 seats. On paper that’s a mandate. In practice, Jeffries is about to discover that a caucus that big is not an army. It’s a crowd.
The freshman class has been in existence for about a week and is already telling reporters it doesn’t intend to follow him. Representative-elect Don Leonard of Ohio summed up the attitude with admirable candor: his class is huge not because of the Democratic Party and its brand but despite it, and many of them are outsiders who didn’t come up through the machine and don’t buy into the conventions.
Greg Casar, who chairs the Congressional Progressive Caucus, put the same thought in friendlier packaging — new members who just ran their elections will be very close to where the voters are, and the voters are very upset.
Translation: we don’t owe you anything, and we’re not waiting our turn.
Several of them won’t even commit to voting for Jeffries as Speaker. There’s an informal progressive outfit already calling itself “the Bloc” — Darializa Avila Chevalier and Claire Valdez of New York, Melat Kiros of Colorado, Adam Hamawy of New Jersey, Chris Rabb of Pennsylvania. Randy Villegas of California noted that Jeffries appears to be the only one running, then immediately attached conditions about prioritizing legislation on health care, foreign policy, and immigration.
That is a ransom note with a thank-you note stapled to the front.
And the squeeze comes from both directions. Some of the holdouts are moderates sitting in districts Trump carried by double digits in 2024. Annie Andrews in South Carolina. James Talarico, who somehow talked Texas into sending him to Washington. Those members cannot vote for a single thing the Bloc wants and expect to survive 2028. They know it. Their first instinct will be to find daylight between themselves and their own leadership, and the second will be to run against Nancy Pelosi’s ghost.
Jeffries will get to 218. Democrats are far too careful about the historic nature of the first Black Speaker to blow it up on the floor. But the gavel is the easy part.
Then he has to govern, and look at what’s queued up. Impeachment number three, which Jamie Raskin wants and Jeffries would prefer to postpone indefinitely because he can count general-election votes. Subpoenas aimed at the president’s family. Investigations of Elon Musk, courtesy of the sixteen members who were drawing up plans before the votes were counted. Hillary Clinton’s thirteen-justice Supreme Court. Kamala Harris on podcasts calling for the abolition of the Electoral College. A credit-card interest cap that would cut millions of Americans off from credit entirely.
Every one of those is catnip to a freshman class elected on anti-establishment anger and desperate to prove it hasn’t gone native. Every one of them is poison in a Trump +12 district.
Jeffries’ real job for the next two years is telling his own members no, constantly, in public, while they hold his speakership over his head. Ask Kevin McCarthy how that assignment goes.
Democrats got 260 seats and no theory of what to do with them beyond retribution. The party has already shown what it does with power it hasn’t earned a mandate for: it overreaches, and then it loses.
Republicans have two years and a long way back. The good news is that the other side is about to hand them the material.
