Raining on his parade? Voter backlash against both Sen. Chuck Schumer and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries becoming Senate Majority Leader and House Speaker could derail their coronation in January.
By Joe Maniscalco
It didn’t take the Democratic Party leadership long to prove Robert Ovetz correct.
Earlier this week, noted labor author and academic Robert Ovetz told Work-Bites that despite the historic blue wave that swept across the country on November 3, we should expect the Democratic Party leadership to do things the way they’ve always done them.
That, of course, means remaining completely subservient to the demands of their big money donors—and not doing a thing to actually help struggling working class families get ahead if doing so means upsetting that gravy train.
Representative-elect Don Leonard was part of last week’s massive blue wave, flipping Ohio’s traditionally Republican 15th Congressional District seat blue after running on a winning populist platform of getting money out of politics and pulling the plug on the US war machine’s disastrous presence in the Middle East.
This week, Leonard—a former college professor who promised to “call out cowards and stand up to bullies” once he got to Washington, D.C.—revealed that senior Democratic Party leaders have already threatened to make his tenure in office a “living hell” if he doesn’t bend the knee and back Rep. Hakeem Jeffries as the next Speaker of the House in January.
“We kind of knew this stuff was coming,” Leonard said in a YouTube video posted on Tuesday. “It’s part of the stuff you see in the movies—it’s a whole another thing when it’s in person, by people who actually care about you, and are cheering for you, but expect you to wear the team jersey and be a good team player.”
Rep. Hakeem Jeffries [NY-8th District] and Sen. Chuck Schumer [D-NY] are expected to be crowned House Speaker and Senate Majority Leader, respectively, when the new Congress is convened in January.
Rep. Hakeem Jeffries really wants to be the next Speaker of the House—will voter opposition prevent that from happening?
As Ovetz talked about this past week, both party leaders epitomize the do-nothing establishment figures voters in poll after poll despise and want replaced.
“Schumer is a known entity,” Ovetz told Work-Bites. “He's very, very closely tied to the banking industry. Hakeem Jeffries was a corporate lawyer working at a white shoe firm before he got into the [New York] State Assembly.”
Independent Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders and Democratic Michigan Senator Elissa Slotkin each declared this week that they will not support Schumer’s ascension.
Sanders told reporters that Schumer hasn’t been providing the leadership necessary to confront growing wealth inequality across the country, while Slotkin said she is “seeking change” at the top.
What difference that’ll make remains to be seen.
At the same time, White House counsel Will Scharf threatened Democratic Congress Member Robert Garcia [D-CA] that he might be guilty of “blatant criminality” if he goes ahead with plans to investigate the Trump administration after he becomes chair of the House Oversight Committee in January.
“We are monitoring the abusive and capricious threats that are now proliferating from Democrat legislators who seek to abuse the legislative process to intimidate and to interfere with the lawful function of government,’ Scharf said in a bizarre letter dated November 9.
All of the strong-arm tactics and gross attempts at intimidation underscores, yet again, just how divorced everyday working class people are from power after they dutifully register their votes at the polls—and why none of us truly concerned with the lives of working class people can afford to tune out.
On the contrary, watching as much of what Ovetz warned about unfolds in real time this week, should convince us all of the need to be more engaged than ever. In short, whatever organizing, activation, or mobilization that went it to producing last week’s blue wave needs to continue.
"The working class vote has turned out for the Democrats, and that means we need to amplify this,” Ovetz told Work-Bites this past week. “We need to continue to escalate tactics and apply pressure on the Democrats so that they will respond.”