On Monday, less than a week after the Democratic Party’s election romp, the House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, should have been riding high. Instead, around lunchtime, he stood stoically behind the lectern in the bowels of the U.S. Capitol, as reporters grilled him about the group of Senate Democrats who had joined Republicans to wind down a government shutdown showdown that polls suggested Democrats were winning: Was Mr. Jeffries disappointed in these colleagues? Did he think Chuck Schumer should remain the Senate Democratic leader? Would the base’s fury over the deal hurt the party in next year’s midterms?
Mr. Jeffries looked composed and picture perfect in his dark suit. But there was audible frustration as he repeatedly tried to shift the focus onto the “Republican health care crisis” and President Trump’s “extreme agenda.” One reporter asked about a recent remark by Dr. Mehmet Oz, the former television host who now heads the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, prompting a flash of disgust from the leader. “I’m not going to respond to any comments from randos like Dr. Oz, who is woefully unqualified to be in whatever position he holds,” he said. “He’s a joke. These people are jokes.”
Being Hakeem Jeffries looks decidedly unfun these days. His party is shut out of power in Washington, a lousy situation under any circumstances. And with Donald Trump running amok, he is facing next-level stress and scrutiny. “This is an unprecedented moment for all of us, and certainly the intensity of the job is unlike anything that a rational person could have imagined,” he told me in a recent phone interview.
If anything, that was an understatement. Democratic voters are spoiling for a fight, and many think their party’s leadership does not have what it takes to “meet the moment,” as I keep hearing. Already, a bevy of progressive House hopefuls, many of them challenging Democratic incumbents in the midterm primaries, have vowed not to support Mr. Jeffries for leader if elected. In New York, a young, lefty city councilman is reportedly readying a run for Mr. Jeffries’s congressional seat.
The House minority leader isn’t Democrats’ top object of intraparty animus. That would be the Senate minority leader, Mr. Schumer, who has again infuriated his base by failing to stop a Republican spending bill from clearing the Senate. But unlike the Schumer pile-on, the criticisms of Mr. Jeffries feel more nebulous. Yes, he irked progressives by dragging his feet on endorsing Zohran Mamdani in New York’s mayoral race. But Mr. Jeffries’s detractors often do not point to concrete offenses, so much as to what he lacks.
“Hakeem Jeffries was chosen at a time when he was expected to be a peacetime leader, a coalition builder,” said Amanda Litman, the head of Run for Something, a group dedicated to getting young progressives into elected office. “He is not well suited to being a leader of the opposition — a wartime consigliere.”
The popular radio host Charlamagne tha God has offered a more colorful, if head-scratching, assessment, slamming Mr. Jeffries for “talking like he’s Chuck E. Cheese Obama.”
All of which fuels my own suspicions that Mr. Jeffries’s fatal flaw is that he is too unobjectionable. He comes across as too smooth, too reasonable, too benign to cut a compelling opposition figure in the Trump era, when attention and attitude are everything. Even Republicans acknowledge Mr. Jeffries makes a lousy boogeyman.
He has the political pragmatism of his predecessor, Nancy Pelosi, but not her wicked street-fighting record, nor her gift for making the opposition’s, and especially Mr. Trump’s, head explode. To grip the imagination of his political allies and opponents, the minority leader needs to find a way to be less even-keeled — maybe even a bit of a jerk.
Mr. Jeffries knows Democratic voters crave leaders who share their outrage. In recent months, he has seemed to assume a more combative stance. Pushing back against Republican efforts at congressional redistricting has become a top priority for him. He has been jetting around the country, spotlighting the issue and urging state Democratic leaders to redraw the maps where they control the process.
This is not an easy lift. Mr. Jeffries has had to do much cajoling, maybe a little arm-twisting, and a whole lot of fund-raising. He helped raise millions of dollars for Prop 50 in California. And yet when people think of the Democrats’ redistricting crusade, the bulk of attention and credit go to Gavin Newsom, California’s flamboyant, Trump-trolling governor.
Much of a congressional leader’s work is done behind the scenes. And Mr. Jeffries’s defenders praise his ability to, as the saying goes, herd the cats in these crazy times. “He is doing a great job in keeping the caucus united,” said Representative Ro Khanna, a California progressive who is among those calling for Mr. Schumer to step down from Senate leadership. As an example, Mr. Khanna credited Mr. Jeffries for getting every member of the caucus swiftly signed onto a petition to force a House vote on compelling the administration to release the Epstein files. “He was absolutely critical,” said Mr. Khanna, who is spearheading the petition effort along with Representative Thomas Massie, a Republican.
As Ms. Litman sees it, Mr. Jeffries might well make a good leader under different circumstances. “There are skills you need to be a really effective legislator in the majority — holding your coalition together, being mindful of different personalities and what people need — versus the skills you need to be in opposition, with sharp elbows and deep instincts and a no-ducks-to-give mentality.” (Note: Ms. Litman did not say “ducks.”) “Tonally, strategically, he just doesn’t meet the moment,” she said, adding that he “should be afraid” of a primary challenge.
Mr. Jeffries insists he is not concerned about that.
Restive progressives aren’t the only ones who find Mr. Jeffries’s low-key style vexing. Republicans have had a heck of a time figuring out how to demonize him — something that comes through in the G.O.P.’s political emails and other attacks. They do not even bother to try to portray Mr. Jeffries as a wild-eyed radical or direct danger to the Republic, the way they did with Ms. Pelosi. Instead, they paint him as a weak “nonleader” held hostage by his party’s left flank.
“No one knows who Hakeem Jeffries is, so he doesn’t really serve as a good foil for us, in terms of using his face or name in attack ads,” a Republican operative told me. But he can be easily spun as a symbol of the Democratic establishment’s failure to stand up to the party’s left wing, the operative added.
Back when Mr. Jeffries was being groomed to succeed Ms. Pelosi, I was impressed that he seemed to wed a Pelosi-an pragmatism with an engaging style. He seemed, if anything, looser and more at ease than she did, especially in her pre-Trump days.
These days, Mr. Jeffries appears less comfortable, perhaps hamstrung by the burdens of leadership and too aware that his words now reflect on the entire caucus. His defenders characterize him as still finding his voice — under crushing pressure, no less. And pretty much everyone acknowledges he suffers by comparison with Ms. Pelosi, who, though she infuriated progressives plenty in her time, wound up a political rock star. Hers is a tough act to follow.
Mr. Jeffries disputed my suggestion that he isn’t considered a scrapper or has felt pressure lately to up his game. “I’ve actually had significant moments where I’ve had to ratchet up the aggression,” he said, listing several episodes where he had gone hard at conservatives such as Jeff Sessions, Sheriff David Clarke and Burgess Owens. “I don’t actively and aggressively lean into it,” he said. “I let the authentic moment present itself and then respond appropriately.”
It’s not that Mr. Jeffries can’t throw down. A video of him bickering with a Republican congressman from New York, Representative Mike Lawler, in the hallways of the Capitol last month went viral. “You’re not going to talk to me and talk over me because you don’t want to hear what I have to say,” the minority leader challenged, right up in Mr. Lawler’s face. “So why don’t you just keep your mouth shut?”
He is also not above taking personal swipes at Trump officials, such as the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, whom he recently called “sick” and “out of control” and mused about whether “she’s just demented, ignorant, a stone-cold liar or all of the above.”
But except on rare occasions, even when lobbing zingers, Mr. Jeffries comes across as cool and controlled. His face remains strikingly still even when he’s fired up. The cadence of his speech sounds as though he’s delivering blocks of text committed to memory.
Mr. Jeffries’s supporters see his steadiness as a plus. “I think the answer to Trumpism is to provide more statesmanlike leadership, which is more Jeffries’s temperament,” said Mr. Khanna.
True enough, but in this political climate, the Jeffries style risks feeling overly programmed, dispassionate and — as much as I hate the term — inauthentic.
In an interview on Election Day, before the returns started rolling in, I asked Mr. Jeffries if he felt compelled by the turmoil of recent months to adjust his approach to his job.
“It’s been incredibly intense from the very beginning of the Trump presidency, and we continue to be in a more-is-more environment,” he said. “In every possible way, House and Senate Democrats and elected officials from across the country have to continue to rise to the occasion, to meet the moment and to forcefully push back against the extremism that is being unleashed on the American people every day by the Trump administration.”
See what I mean?
Asked what he thought his Democratic critics want more of that they’re not getting, he again pointed to the “more-is-more environment, which means more rallies, more demonstrations, more press conferences, more historic speeches on the Senate floor, more historic speeches on the House floor, more hearings on Capitol Hill.” And so on. It sounded like an elegant way to suggest that Democratic leaders are already doing all the right things; they just need to do more of them.
Off the record, Mr. Jeffries is looser. Franker. More exasperated. More passionate. But that counts for very little for a leader serving as one of his party’s key faces and voices. And it leaves an inspiration gap, if you will, to be filled largely by leaders from farther left on the party spectrum, ideologues with boatloads of charisma but less suited to helping Democrats build their big tent.
Mr. Jeffries and I talked again the Sunday after the election. He was feeling good and expressed satisfaction that affordability — expected to be the top issue with voters next year — had proved a unifying focus. “There were some pundits who suggested that it was the wrong issue for us to focus on, as opposed to leaning into things like the rise of authoritarianism,” he noted, but was quick to add, “I think we can do both.”
As for where he should go from here? “Our mandate is to continue to stand up for the American people, push back against the extremism of Donald Trump and the Republican Party, while at the same time articulating a compelling vision to make life more affordable and drive down the high cost of living for everyday Americans.”
Yes. But also, woof.
For better or, mostly, worse, Mr. Trump has changed political expectations and the tenor of political discourse in this country. In the process, he has redefined the jobs of even his political adversaries. Mr. Jeffries may need a more serious makeover to catch up.
Michelle Cottle writes about national politics for Opinion. She has covered Washington and politics since the Clinton administration. @mcottle
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