Hakeem Jeffries Fails Physics

 

In my last blog post, I pointed out that politics, in a functioning democracy, is not immune to Newton's Third Law: it is subject to an equal and opposite reaction from the opposing political side. What is more, I warned that when politicians fail to come to grips with that axiomatic principle, upheaval can result.  I pointed out that the rise of the socialist and progressive left is precisely because the leadership of the Democratic Party has not grasped this basic concept and is repeating the mistakes of the pre-2016 Republican leadership, something that led to that party being devoured by Trump and his MAGA minions.  

Well, before the electrons on that post even had a chance to, er, dry, Hakeem Jeffries — the putative future Speaker of the House — demonstrated that he is one of those leaders who still hasn’t grasped this basic principle of political physics.

As the New Zork Times reported:

Representative Hakeem Jeffries, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, met privately in recent weeks with Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law and top outside adviser, and discussed potential areas of common ground, according to five people with knowledge of the meeting.

And with that report, the Democratic Socialists of America probably gained 100,000 new members before lunch.

This was such a profoundly stupid thing to do that I agree with those who consider it disqualifying for a potential future Speaker of the House.

First, with what appears to be a veritable "blue wave" tsunami on the horizon, the only response from Jeffries should have been one of strength: if he believed a meeting was appropriate, when asked, Jeffries should have agreed, and then set the terms: at my office, at such and such time and date, with publicity photos to be released afterwards. You know, how Donald Trump handled NYC Mayor Mamdani's visit (but, like everything Trump attempts, he screwed it up so badly that Mamdani seemed like the leader and Trump the supplicant). Such a posture immediately establishes that the wind is at your back, and not the reverse. By contrast, agreeing to a clandestine meeting makes Jeffries look small, like a thief in the night rather than a leader of consequence.  So, just from the aspect of Leadership 101, this was a profoundly stupid thing to do; an unforced error of clownish proportions. 

But the more egregious error was simply failing to reject the meeting outright.  After nearly two years of the nation suffering under the boot heel of the Trump regime, after nearly two years of a collapsing economy, of a lost war, of Americans being gunned down by ICE goons, of concentration camps for foreigners, of spectacular corruption, of pointless and self-destructive trade wars, and of watching this regime poison our food and water, the only sane response was to tell Kushner that there would be plenty of time to talk once the congressional subpeonas go out to him and his family of miscreants. Jeffries' failure to grasp the present American crisis and its direct connection to Kushner and his circle of scoundrels is, frankly, stunning. 

The blowback from the base has been rightly furious.  At a time when a majority of Democrat voters report dissatisfaction with the leadership of the party, Jeffries compounds the issue by signalling that he, too, will be a lily-livered lickspittle. 

In the wake of the subsequent firestorm set off by his incompetence, Jeffries attempted to put out the fire by posting a video on social media where he looked into the camera with dead eyes and said 'a whole lot of nothin'.' 

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What I’m seeing here — collusion with the political enemy — echoes the same duplicity that Republican leaders like John Boehner and Trent Lott once practiced on their conservative base, a pattern that ultimately birthed Trumpism when the base’s anger boiled over into a “burn it all down” reaction. I don't expect anything different to happen here given enough time and an unchanged path by the DNC.  The very thing Democrat leadership is terrified of happening, which is to say a wholesale rejection of neo-liberal, corporatist Democrat-lite politics in favor of a hardline ideological progressive left, is now far more likely to occur precisely because of the addle‑brained duplicity Jeffries exhibited here.

As with gravity, you can't run from, suspend, or deny Newton's Third Law of Politics. Hakeem Jeffries and his ilk are sure to learn that lesson the hard way.

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