How Hakeem Jeffries Could Change Washington

By playing political Jujutsu, Jeffries could score political points and moderate the House agenda

Hakeem Jeffries can change Congress significantly without hurting his party’s chances of winning the next election. He can get his party to vote “present” on any motion to vacate the Chair in exchange for an open amendment process on significant legislation during the rest of the Congress that he would gain by default once a handful of more extreme members could no longer hold Speaker McCarthy hostage.

Any single member of the House can introduce a motion to vacate the Chair in the House. If the motion secures a majority of those present and voting, the Speaker is forced to stand down, and a new election is held. Several Freedom Caucus members regularly use the threat of removing Speaker Kevin McCarthy as a tagline in their press releases.

House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries is new, having replaced Nancy Pelosi at the start of the 118th Congress. He has an opportunity to make a significant departure from the legacy of his predecessor by thinking outside the box. According to RealClear Politics, he is the least known of our national leaders, with 30.7% favorable and 33.0% unfavorable ratings – but his negative 2.3% spread is the best of any national leader in either party (all of our leaders are underwater when it comes to their approval ratings).

If the Democrats vote “present” on a motion to vacate the Chair made by a Freedom Caucus member in retaliation for a House vote to keep the government open on October 1, the Freedom Caucus would likely lose such a vote by 20-202 with 213 voting “present.” Jeffries could then announce that the Democrats were not going to be used as a tool for the shenanigans of a few “MAGA extremists” or whatever rhetoric was necessary to hold his caucus together.  The vote would highlight how isolated the Matt Gaetz’s of the world are in their attempt to impose unreasonable amendments that have no chance of being enacted into law on their colleagues in either party.  

The immediate gain for Jeffries would be a bipartisan vote to pass a Continuing Resolution that keeps the government open while passing an emergency supplemental appropriation bill requested by the White House.  A second benefit would be the likely bipartisan passage of all 12 appropriation bills at levels agreed to by Congress and the President in the debt reduction compromise. The final accomplishment would be restoring some semblance of bipartisan lawmaking in the House, which has been an ignored demand of the American public for the last several decades, making the Democratic Party appear, in the eyes of the people, to be the responsible, or at least the adult party in the House.

When it took 15 ballots for Kevin McCarthy to win the Speakership in January, the Democrat minority stood in lockstep in their support for Jeffries without offering McCarthy any help (unlike the help John Boehner got in 2013 from Democrats who took a slow trip back from Mario Cuomo’s funeral in New York the day of the Speaker election). In reality, the vote for Speaker is the only vote determining which party is in the majority. It was up to the Republicans to elect a Speaker who had the support of the majority of the House. While McCarthy’s fight undoubtedly generated a great deal of schadenfreude on the part of Democrats, the bottom line is that a Speaker without a majority based on their own party’s votes is not in a solid position. So McCarthy had to win on his own.

A vote mid-Congress to vacate the Speaker’s Chair is not necessarily in the interests of the Democrats, other than the potential embarrassment of watching the Republicans go through their whole multi-ballot election again. While that might be fun for Democrats to watch, the bottom line is that the House cannot take action without a Speaker. A move by more radical elements of the Freedom Caucus to vacate the Speaker’s Chair would stop all House action and make it virtually impossible to pass anything, maybe for months. For instance, if the House were going through a multi-ballot exercise to elect a Speaker when the Continuing Resolution expired, the government would have to shut down and would be unable even to consider legislation funding the government until after a Speaker was elected.

If the Democrats allowed themselves to be used as leverage by elements of the Freedom Caucus, they would be complicit in the breakdown of governing. And, if McCarthy were removed, the Democrats would be duty-bound to support Jeffries in the ensuing election for Speaker. And what would be gained? Republican Leader Steve Scalise’s cancer diagnosis might make it impossible for him to run at this time, and Whip Tom Emmer’s relationship with Trump might preclude his chances. They might eventually end up with GOP Conference Chair Elise Stefanik as the new Speaker, the moderate turned Trump sycophant. Stefanik was barely hiding her positioning as an alternative had McCarthy failed to win in January, so her attempting to take advantage of a motion to vacate the Chair would not be surprising.

From Jeffries’s point of view, would he be better off with Stefanik as Speaker, especially if Congress stopped functioning for a month or more? It’s hard to see how. And what would be gained if purple-district Republicans running for re-election take on the role of the Freedom Caucus as leverage against more extreme policy proposals that are either veto-bait or dead on arrival in the Senate? The Democrats would find themselves aligned with the people they were most likely to target for defeat in 2024.

In the aftermath of a failed motion to vacate, the Democrats still would be in the minority, so any amendments they offer to major legislation would still need to garner support from some Republicans to be successful. By definition, they would have to be bipartisan. But that is good for Congress since they could get things done. A single-digit approval rating for the institution of Congress does no one any good politically and undermines public support for the most significant check on executive power.

This would be no panacea for Kevin McCarthy. Being dependent on the votes (or the withholding of those votes) of the opposition to keep your job is not something any legislative leader would want. The only advantage for him would be that the Freedom Caucus would be forced to come up with realistic proposals that could be supported by a majority of their own Republican colleagues because their ability to leverage the Democrats in their threats would be gone.

However, absent a Freedom Caucus gun to his head, McCarthy would have the ability to make the House function, which voters also said they wanted. Back when Congress worked, a Speaker could go to the most extreme wing of their party and say, “Look, I want this bill to be as conservative as possible but still be able to pass. So, could you work with me and be realistic? Otherwise, I will go to the moderate elements of the Democratic party to see if they are interested in a compromise. Of course, the bill will be less conservative, but the Majority will have accomplished its goal of being able to govern and fulfilling its Constitutional obligations to pass appropriation bills.”

Opening the House to bipartisan amendments shifts the incentives from calculated intransigence to creative lawmaking, with centrists in both parties becoming the focal point for the passage of legislation. Being held hostage by the most extreme elements just assures nothing will pass, and the legislative agenda will turn off independent and suburban voters.

In conclusion, Jeffries comes off looking like a leader. The Democrats would not be in the uncomfortable position of being used as leverage by elements of the Freedom Caucus. More reasonable legislation can pass. And the most extreme parts of the Republican party would be isolated.

From the Republican point of view, McCarthy would not be under a constant threat of blackmail by radical members representing a fraction of Republicans and would gain leverage in negotiating compromises on must-pass legislation that allows the broader Republican Conference to showcase their accomplishments by passing legislation their constituents want.

Ultimately, Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries could change how Washington, DC, works for the better without sacrificing his party’s chances of winning the next election. And, should he be successful in winning the speakership, he might appreciate having Members of the opposition party willing to do the same thing for him one day. And that would be progress.