By now I think we’ve all seen this clip from Hakeem Jeffries’ appearance on Morning Bro:

Some Blue MAGA people I follow on Bluesky excused this because we have to expect that the Speaker is bad at politics but good at counting votes. There was also a lot of cope about people like Robert Garcia and Jamie Raskin doing investigations which is something Jeffries implicitly endorsed, so in his heart, Jeffries is really a fighter.

First, the vote counting part is false: Nancy Pelosi was incredibly good at counting votes. There is no evidence that Jeffries is. In fact, he was blindsided by a couple of the drama queens in his caucus when they voted for the rule to advance legislation that almost his entire caucus opposed. And, I would argue, Pelosi was better at politics than Jeffries, which is a low bar, I realize.

Second, Jeffries is going to have a big majority in the House, so counting votes isn’t that important. What is important is coming up with a legislative and investigative agenda that his big majority will unite around, and also accountability. The base turned out to hold Trump accountable. A Democratic House or Senate that isn’t investigating Epstein, Starlink, DOGE and all the other corruption going on isn’t going to get the level of excitement we need in 2028.

Moving on to Schumer, the Blue MAGA cope I saw was a naming of some of Schumer’s recruits, like Turek, Hamilton and others. I guess the response to his recruitment of Janet Mills is “hush, now.” Or how about nutcase Haley Stevens, whose name I hope to never have to type again? She was Schumer’s pick, and he was pretty lukewarm in his support of El-Sayed. And what about Angie Nixon, who was basically ignored by Schumer?

The good news here is that a lot of the newly elected Members of Congress are there in spite of Schumer and/or Jeffries, owe them nothing, and have made big promises to the voters who elected them. It’s clear that Schumer and Jeffries will become Majority Leader and Speaker, respectively, but I don’t know how long they’re going to last. One of the big fracture points will be the filibuster. I’m guessing Talarico and AES, who have promised change, aren’t going to be interested in venerating that Senate tradition that gets in their way.

The Democratic base has been taken for granted for years by these two “leaders”. Making excuses for their ineptitude shows a form of subservience that I just don’t possess. We worked our asses off for change, and anyone in leadership who isn’t ready to change needs to get the hell out of the way.

One more thing: the complete turnover of Texas to Democrats is going to give Gina Hinojosa the opportunity to bring a lot of change to that state. Voters are going to expect the same from their national leadership. This will be interesting to watch. Do nothing time is over.