Hakeem Jeffries doesn’t seem to fit very neatly into the “Establishment vs. Progressives” dichotomy. He’s a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and has an “A” rating on ProgressivePunch — take that with a grain of salt since Republicans controlled Congress the entire time he’s been there. He also gets nearly all of his campaign funding from either corporate PACs or people wealthy enough to donate upwards of $200 at a time, makes a point of presenting himself as a centrist despite representing a D+36 district and seems to think charter schools are great (they’re not; they’re no better than public schools once you adjust for socioeconomic factors and they exacerbate systemic inequalities).
Like many of the Left, I was very disappointed to see Barbara Lee lose her bid to become House Democratic Caucus chair. I would have preferred to see her challenge Pelosi for the role of House Speaker and saw the prospect of Lee being Caucus chair as a “consolation prize”— it really stings to have even that hope snatched away by another self-described centrist. But rather than jump straight into attacking Jeffries as another “Goldman-Sachs Democrat” who will use his position to slow down any legislation that threatens the profit margins of his donors, I want to at least explore more optimistic interpretations.
Whatever else he might be, Jeffries is a person of color elected to a pretty influential role. He’s done some good work related to criminal justice issues like opposing Stop-And-Frisk and the gerrymandering practice of counting prisoners as residents of the district within which the prison is located. He’s also been pretty critical of HUD’s failures to maintain public housing which seems positive as long as it doesn’t turn into a justification for privatizing yet another piece of our social safety net. Help me out here — I really want to feel good about this guy being chair of our House Caucus so please comment if you’ve got more good things to say about him.