New Leadership?

 New leadership . . . that's what the voters obviously want.  

That's what Martin O'Malley offered as a presidential candidate in 2016, but he was ostracized and driven away, like in the "Flintstones" episode where Fred and Barney tell the Great Gazoo to buzz off and never come back after he gets them in trouble by giving them an Italian sports car that's more of a pain in the neck than it's worth.

Anyway, we've had a decade of Donald Trump since O'Malley ran for President, and the midterms proved that Americans are now ready for new leadership.  Except the Washington Democratic establishment.   

Hakeem Jeffries is about to become the first black Speaker of the House of Representatives.  He has gravitas.  He has influence.  He also has a bad track record in opposing Trump.  Charles Schumer is in position to continue as Senate Democratic leader and thus the leader of the majority.  He is a Washington insider, having come to Washington as a U.S. Representative.  He knows how to work the levers of power.  But he apparently doesn't do it.  He's capitulated to the Republicans so many times that I call him "Captain Caveman."  (Another Hanna-Barbera cartoon reference there.)  

They also have one other thing in common, aside from the fact that they're both from Brooklyn.  One is a strong supporter of the pro-Israel, pro-genocide American-Israeli Political Action Committee.  And so is Schumer.

Like Chicago regarding reform ("Chicago ain't ready for reform yet." - Chicago politician Paddy Bauler, 1955), Washington Democrats ain't ready for new leadership yet.  But the Democratic base - and a lot of Democratic-leaning independents like myself - voted for it.  Jeffries and Schumer are too clueless to realize that compromise and consensus are things of the past, and this is not the time to pursue either with Republicans.  Schumer has already proven himself incapable of being a majority leader.  He failed to get President Biden's ambitious Build Back better agenda, which would have been the biggest domestic policy shift since the New Deal and would have set the U.S. on a course to become more like a European country (with all the nice things that apply), passed, and he failed to expand his Senate majority in 2022 when he had an historic chance to do so and buck the trend of the President's party losing seats in midterm elections.  As a result, the political action committees for Tim Ryan and Val Demings no longer have a need for paid employees.   And while Jeffries is unproven as a Speaker, his refusal to support universal health care and his back-room clandestine meeting with Jared Kushner do not portend confidence.

What can be done?   Well, Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) is opposing Schumer for the position of Senate Majority Leader, and he promises a more progressive and more aggressive style of leadership.  Assuming Mary Peltola is elected to the Senate from Alaska, the Senate Democratic caucus will have 56 members, so it takes 29 votes to elect a caucus leader.  Given that half of the Democratic senators in the incoming 120th Congress are opposed to Schumer, Van Hollen is off to a fine start.

Replacing Jeffries is more complicated.  The Senate is controlled by the majority leader, not the presiding officer, who is either the Vice President or the Senate president pro tempore, who is usually the senior member of the majority party (in the case of the 120th Congress, Patty Murray of Washington State).  But the House is controlled by the Speaker, the presiding officer.  The speakership, like the Vice Presidency and the Senate presidency pro tempore, is a constitutional office.  The Speaker is called that because he or she "speaks" for the House of Representatives.  The election of a Speaker is a bipartisan vote.  Now, the final number of House Democrats in the 120th Congress hasn't been determined yet - a few House elections still haven't been called - but the final number is likely to be around 260.  A bare majority of 218 is needed to control the House.  So, at the least, 42 House Democrats would have to join with Republicans to vote against Jeffries and instead vote for a third candidate among their own ranks to deny Jeffries the 218 votes needed to be elected Speaker.  Several ballots would then have to be cast before the Democrats either elect Jeffries or a more liberal Democrat as an alternative to Jeffries.  It would be like how the party conventions nominated presidential candidates before the conventions mostly became formalities. 

Except that no Democrat is likely to challenge Jeffries, because he already has so much power that he can punish anyone who tries to block him, as Nancy Pelosi punished Tim Ryan in 2016 when he ran against her to be House minority leader. Tim Ryan, who was seen as a future House leader, is a political hasbeen because he refused to suck up to Pelosi.  Jeffries is about to be Speaker of the House because he was happy to do so.

But after Jeffries failed to get enough Democrats to vote to recommend to the full House that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth (more on him later) because eleven of them (including Pelosi) couldn't make it to the Capitol, an argument for an opponent to his leadership from within just got stronger.  

As always, there's hope.  Kevin McCarthy proved so ineffective as Speaker of the House that he was removed by his own party.  Hakeem Jeffries may face the same rebellion as Speaker in 2027.  And Chuck Schumer may be out before the new Congress even convenes. 

Oh yeah, in that same "Flintstones" episode that I referenced, Fred and Barney get kidnapped by spies from a SPECTRE-type international syndicate because they mistake Barney for a nuclear scientist who hasn't been seen in public for ages - partly because Barney and Fred had that Italian sports car.  But despite Fred and Barney telling Gazoo never to come back, he does and saves them from the spy syndicate.  They appreciate him again.  I would personally love it if Martin O'Malley, told never to come back when he was rejected as a would-be President, did come back in 2028 and got on track to become the 48th President of the United States, and at 65 he'd still be younger than Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders were in 2016, younger than Joe Biden was in 2020, and younger than Donald Trump was in 2024.  But I know that's not going to happen.  I once believed that O'Malley would make an excellent President.  I still believe that.  But I know that he believes that the U.S. needs newer leadership than what he can offer.  And he's probably right.

And if we don't get new leadership - or unless the old leadership proves me wrong about them - I remain, as before the midterms, a secessionist.