House members have responded to legitimate criticism with cynicism. Let’s not have another ‘Bernie bros’ moment

on Thursday, Jeffries refused to saywhether he supported or opposed controversial efforts to integrate the US and Israeli militaries.

Jeffries also said this summer that he opposes Medicare for All, reversing his earlier position, and putting him at odds with a number of progressive Democrats who campaigned on the platform.

He’s been consistently hostile to the progressive faction of his party, refusing to endorse Mamdani for New York City mayor for months. And it was recently revealed that Jeffries met with Jared Kushner in private before the midterms

…Many progressives view Jeffries as an establishment figure who offers no hope for meaningful change and want someone less beholden to corporate interests to be speaker. Jeffries and some of his allies, meanwhile, have suggested that denying him the opportunity to become the first Black speaker in US history would be, to quote Bloomberg, “racially insensitive”.

…And we’ve seen this craven use of identity politics to smear progressive politics before, haven’t we? It’s the Bernie bros playbook all over again.

  • TheTechnician27English
    67·
    2 hours ago

    I mean, the author writes “corporate Democrats” in the headline but then cites only Haley Stevens and Hakeem Jeffries. That’s two – congratulations – but that’s not a strong case this is some systemic issue worth such an alarming headline.

    • Regarding Stevens, as the author alludes to, she’s a joke within the party and everyone thinks what she’s doing is cringe. Everyone hates it. She’s abusing feminism as a shield, and everyone realizes this. She’s done for in electoral politics, and she’s out of the House in January.
    • Then she cites Jeffries having done this one time, buried deep in a CNN interview:

    During the June congressional primaries, when a picture of Jeffries came up on the screen at a victory party for Claire Valdez, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, the crowd yelled: “You’re next!"

    “It was very interesting to me, as observed by others, that there was almost zero diversity in that crowd,” Jeffries said in a CNN interview this week.

    I don’t like this, and I can’t say for sure that he hasn’t said it elsewhere, but citing him doing this one time is pretty weaksauce when the only other person you’re accusing of “weaponizing identity politics to smear progressives” is Haley “self-immolated career” Stevens.