Collaborator! Way to manage the media, Jeffries.
I was away when this story hit. Kay and others in the comments have talked about it, but I wanted to say a couple things about it, too. First, Jeffries having a secret meeting with the clown who is flailing and failing to negotiate an end to the Iran war is bad because there are no deals to be made with the Trump Administration (who Mark Carney correctly observed, “sign everything in pencil”), and if there are deals to be made, Jeffries is far, far ahead of the timeline. He just looks (and is) weak for trying to pre-negotiate with Kushner.
Second, why does the opposition party need to “negotiate” with the Republicans months before (dios mediante) they are going to be in power? The role of the opposition party is to oppose. Jeffries really doesn’t seem to get this. He apparently wants to “get things done.” 2027 is not the time for that. It’s the time to open investigations into the rampant corruption that is deeply embedded in the Trump Administration. It’s time to rip the lid off of the masked goons who have been killing our people in the streets. It’s time to have a strategy to exact the maximum number of concessions from the Trump Administration to get a budget passed.
Jamelle Bouie has a good video where he tries to take the most charitable reading possible of Jeffries’ actions:
It’s worth a watch, because, as the title implies, Bouie thinks that even the most charitable reading of Jeffries’ actions indicates that he isn’t thinking the way McConnell did when Republicans were in opposition to Obama. McConnell’s goal was to make people think that the Obama Administration couldn’t get anything done, so they would vote for a Republican trifecta. Mission accomplished. That’s also Jeffries’ job, but he’s taking secret meetings with Kushner instead of planning that.
Speaking of McConnell, the guy who famously denied Obama a Supreme Court appointment, it sure does seem like the Supremes are very secure in their knowledge that either Democrats will not win the Senate, or that Thune will blast through their replacements in the lame duck session if they do resign immediately after a midterm Democratic Senate victory. I wonder if Schumer and his caucus have a game plan for that? Or is he taking secret meetings with Jared Kushner, too?
If we have a dozen or so “leftist” Democrats in Congress, Jeffries might have a hard time getting elected Speaker, especially if some of the center-right troublemakers decide they want some leverage. There’s nothing wrong with that. He’s clearly misread the times. He’s a poor politician who might be a decent legislative leader.
If there is a fight over Jeffries becoming Speaker, expect his hometown newspaper to call out the “divisiveness” of the Democrats:
Overall, the Times’ repeated charge of “divisive”, along with “polarizing”, implies a previous and virtuous whole that is currently being destroyed by the left. It assumes voters agree that in the face of deep fear of Trump and his allies, we have to stick together, and that progressive candidates can’t beat Republicans in the midterms.
But the Times’s mythical unified country never existed. The United States has always been riven by race, class, gender, religion, immigration status and much more. And vigorous debate has always been at the core of truly democratic politics.
For the Times, “unity” is a stand-in for the powers-that-be in the Democratic party and “their preferred strategy of running moderate campaigns that won’t offend aging incumbents, never-Trump Republicans, and the multimillionaire-and-up donor class,” as the editors of Hammer & Hope Magazine recently put it.
The mealy-mouthed, centrist candidates the party’s leadership has chosen in the name of unity have repeatedly alienated or failed to energize voters, especially African Americans.
Part of the issue with having two legislative leaders who come from New York City is that they’re going to be swayed by the status quo pearl clutching in the Times, if they aren’t the sources for it. Those two need to go.
