Meeting With the Devil

Damn those folks in Washington!  Just when I think I can get away from commenting on out politics, I get pulled back in!

With the 2026 midterms approaching House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries (above) met with unofficial Trump aide Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law, in New York to discuss policy initiatives in the new 120th Congress that convenes in January.  Kushner wanted to talk about issues that Jeffries, who is likely to become the next Speaker of the House owing to the likelihood of a Democratic House as a result of the November midterms, can work on, ranging from inflation to the price of gasoline.

Jeffries apparently agreed to meet with Kushner - who has no official role in his father-in-law's administration and his used his power as an intermediary for Trump to concoct foreign policy deals - because he thinks Kushner can and will act on good faith.    

What a clown Jeffries is!

Jeffries wanting to due business with Kushner - and presumably allow him to act as a go-between for him and White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles - makes about as much sense a chicken thinking he can deal with Colonel Sanders.  Kushner is clearly looking for a way to infiltrate the Democratic power base - such as it is - and get Jeffries and Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer to make concessions to Trump in exchange for promises - promises - for a deal on mundane policy initiatives that Trump has no intention of honoring.  

Nothing Kushner does is in the interest of compromise.  He is merely interested in seeking "common ground" with Jeffries to weigh the scales in favor of disabling the Democrats, both in controlling their agenda and sowing chaos among the progressive Democratic base.  He wished to do this out of a desire to keep the opposition at arm's length so he can continue to present himself as an honest broker in negotiating the peace plans Trump gives him the authority to pursue.  While he throws a monkey wrench into Congress for for Trump , he is also going on these "peace" trips to negotiate with Middle Eastern potentates deals that will further enrich Trump - and, coincidentally, himself.  Jeffries doesn't get it; the time to go over the items in Kamala Harris's "to-do" list - hosing credits, child care, lower tariffs on Turkmenistani apple cider, etc. - is over.  We have something more important to fight for - like a country that doesn't resemble Turkmenistan (assuming we can still save the country, and I remain a secessionist).  

Jeffries has said that his conversation with Kushner does not mean that Kushner himself will not be investigated or prosecuted as the Democratic House plans to look at Trump's corruption.  I can see the strongly worded letters coming out now.   

In offering to help Jeffries to get to Trump through Wiles, who merely runs what passes for the White House staff but does not intervene in policy, Kushner has revealed himself to be the key master and Wiles to be the gatekeeper  - and that is a gate to hell that you do not want to open.

And we know what kind of trouble that can lead to.

As I once noted, Jeffries' uncle,  pan-Africanist professor Leonard Jeffries, is a black supremacist who has made the argument that the melanin blacks have in their skin makes them superior to white folks.  As far as I'm concerned, Brooklyn sent the wrong Jeffries to Congress.  I know Uncle Leonard is 89 now, but even at that age, he likely has more fight in him than his nephew. 

Since Jeffries loves to paraphrase hip-hop performers, I'd like to paraphrase for him a lyric offered by noted rapper O'Shea Jackson, popularly known as Ice Cube, in response to Jeffries taking a meeting with Kushner - "You can't be a (N-word) for life, dude - when you got a white Jew telling you what to do."  There, I said it.

Fight the Matriarchy!

So many progressives want to do away with patriarchy.  Why not do away with matriarchy as well?

We can start with Nancy Pelosi.

As the Democrats, once again as in 2016 faced with the spectre of Donald Trump when they thought they were going to see one of their own become the first female President in history, Pelosi, Capitol Hill's dowager empress, continues to throw sand in in the gears while the House Democratic caucus tries to find a way forward.  

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) tried for a bid to become the ranking minority member on the House Oversight Committee, which would have allowed her to stick it to Trump's cronies in hearings and garner a lot of positive attention for the party.   Pelosi, still in Germany while recovering from a fall she sustained in Luxembourg,  put her thumb on the scales and was able to get House Democrats instead to elect Representative Gerry Connelly of Virginia to assume the position instead.  Connolly is 74 and dealing with esophageal cancer.

Now, I've had my disagreements and issues with AOC in the past, but no one can deny that she is an inspiring leader with excellent communication skills and an ability to make Republicans squirm.  The only trouble is, she's able to make Democrats squirm as well.  In addition to having threatened to have moderate House Democrats in other districts primaried, she offended Pelosi first by defeating Joseph Crowley, whom Pelosi was grooming for leadership in the House, for his House seat and then second by camping out in front of her office door.  At 84, Nancy Pelosi appears to suffer from a uniquely Italian strain of Alzheimer's disease; she remembers only vendettas. 

It's more than personal slights Pelosi punishes Democrats for, however.  She is committed to an increasingly outdated seniority system that rewards old folks like Connolly for time well-served and keeps young'uns like AOC patiently and interminably waiting their turn at leadership posts.  Pelosi has famously trusted the counsel of only her generational peers, and she has long frozen out younger members who seek positions of greater power and responsibility; those who actually make a grab for such positions ultimately commit political suicide.  Ask Tim Ryan.  

To respond to the inevitable point that there is new leadership in the House Democratic caucus, ask yourself this - why is Pelosi, not House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries, calling the shots on ranking committee memberships?  Why does she hold the title of "Speaker Emerita," when no former Speaker of the House ever before held a title like "Speaker Emeritus" after stepping down from party leadership while retaining his House seat?  Why was she still strategizing House elections in the 2024 cycle and proclaiming that Democrats would retake the House based on her own count?  Why did people take Pelosi seriously about that?  Why do I have a feeling that she shared a beer and a chuckle with Peter Thiel, the maliciously craven Geppetto behind James David Vance, when Vance defeated Tim Ryan for a Senate seat?  I think you know the answer. 

Nancy Pelosi is still, in the wake of Kamala Harris's defeat, the most powerful woman in Washington, and she intends to keep it that way through her influence over Jeffries and his team even if it means shunning newer voices over people who, like Pelosi, have been in Congress too long.  It leaves the party run by a gerontocracy that refuses to acknowledge the younger generation and preserves the status quo even as the Democrats need fresh ideas for taking on Trump.  And Trump is a problem Pelosi is partially responsible for.  Not only did she use her influence to knock President Biden back down when he was still trying to pick himself up after his debate with Trump, she advocated for an open convention because she did not like Harris.  She lost that fight, but Harris's loss has returned Pelosi to the catbird seat.  She is trying to be the power behind the throne on Capitol Hill.  Except that the Democrats have no power to speak of and may not have any recourse if the Democratic old guard sticks around.

AOC hugged Connolly and congratulated him after losing her bid for ranking minority member on the House Oversight Committee, and she will still serve on that committee in the new Congress, where she still promises to be an effective anti-Trump firebrand.  But a party's younger members are only as strong as its leadership allows them to be, and if Pelosi doesn't get out of the way and let the new House Democratic leadership team actually, well, lead, she's going to get the Democrats - and the country - in big trouble.        

Here Comes Mr. Jordan

Representative Jim Jordan (MAGA-Ohio) is a turd with arms and legs.  He is trying to impeach President Biden for no apparent reason.  He stands against everything and for nothing.  As an assistant wrestling coach at Ohio State University back in the late eighties and early nineties, he did nothing to stop sexual abuse going on in the wrestling program despite firsthand knowledge of it.  He wants a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage, opposes legal abortion, and once said the quiet part out loud about why he and other Republicans oppose high-speed passenger rail (which we're never getting anyway, so it doesn't matter and what if it did?) - because it discourages new-car sales.  He is, in a word, the very sort of fellow who reminds people all over the world why they despise white male Americans so much.  

And yet, he's likely to be Speaker of the House by week's end. 

Jordan (shown here in a rare portrait if him with his suit coat on) is running to be the Republican nominee for Speaker of the House, the third highest and second most powerful elective office in the country, with House Republican leader Steve Scalise of Louisiana his only real competition.   Jordan, as Speaker, would likely push not only his reactionary policy positions on the House but also add extra win dinthe sails of Donald Trump's presidential campaign, making the possibility of Trump's return to power more of a likelihood.  Also, he opposes military funding for Ukraine, Scalise is a tad less extreme - but only a tad - and he is on board with Senate Republicans in supporting Ukraine's war against the invading Russians.  But deciding who you'd rather have as Speaker of the House - Steve Scalise or Jim Jordan - is sort of like deciding whether to see Battlefield Earth or Glitter for a movie night at home. 

Democrats, of course, have to nominate a candidate for Speaker as well, and some of them have suggested forming a coalition with anti-Trump Republicans to get behind a consensus Republican candidate - former Wyoming representative Liz Cheney, for example - in an effort to block Jordan.  (You don't have to be a current or even former member of the House to Speaker; anyone can be chosen for the job.)   So the likeliest scenario will be for the Democrats to nominate their House leader, Hakeem Jeffries, an urge anti-Trump Republicans to put country over party and help Jeffries win the speakership.

Right.  Republicans - even so-called "moderates" outside the MAGA faction - voting for a black guy from Brooklyn who grew up on hip-hop.  Sure.  And, Republicans will inevitably say, isn't his Uncle Leonard a pan-Africanist who insists that the deep reservoir of melanin in the skin of Negroes makes them intellectually, morally, and culturally superior to Caucasians?   

Looking at the House Republican caucus of late, there may actually be something to that theory.    

Out Of the Gate

If the opening of the 116th Congress is any indication, the next two years are going to be as unbearable as the previous two.  Maybe more so.

Democratic Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York signaled the tone of the new Democratic House of Representatives by officially nominating Nancy Pelosi for Speaker by declaring that he was "down with NDP" - a reference to Pelosi's initials and a hip-hop record from the early nineties that I'm trying to forget.  He tried to cast the Democrats as the with-it, cool, hip-hop party in which classic-rock-lovin' middle-aged white people need not apply.  Let the record show that Pelosi is old enough to remember Elvis Presley.  Anyway, such a pop-culture attitude is why so many people still vote Republican.

Meanwhile, newly minted Representative Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) didn't get the memo from Democratic leadership about waiting for the committees to investigate Trump's dastardly dealings thoroughly before calling for his impeachment, vowing at a rally to say that Democrats would "impeach the mother f--ker" while a smartphone camera caught her every word.  Including that one.  A female Muslim using a vulgarity to call for political jihad against an opponent . . . There's another reason why so many people still vote Republican.

However, there has been reason for not to get too much into despair. . . a video of Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), fast becoming America's political sweetheart, dancing to techno music when she was in school has surfaced.  Released by a Republican on Twitter as an attempt to embarrass her, the video instead shows just how adorable and ebullient she really is, and now people love her even more than before.  She then recorded a new video of herself dancing . . . outside her office!  Democrats like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are the reason many people don't vote Republican! :-D

And my own congresswoman, Democrat Mikie Sherrill, has already shown what a great legislator she'll be going forward.  She is the sort of mature politician House Democratic leaders like Nancy Pelosi need of they're going to effectively battle Trump.  Ironically, Sherrill voted against Pelosi for Speaker (voting for Illinois congresswoman Cheri Bustos instead).  But then she promised to vote against Pelosi, so now we know she keeps her word.  And, she is now forgoing her pay as a U.S. Representative until the partial government shutdown ends. 

Now that's integrity.