House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) on Wednesday sought to take the fall for the failure of Democrats to flip control of the House in last week’s elections. But his colleagues weren’t buying it.
In a closed-door meeting of the House Democratic Caucus in the Capitol, Jeffries stood before his peers and said he was to blame for the Republicans’ victory, according to a number of lawmakers in the room. The pushback, they said, was immediate.
“He stood up there today and said, ‘It’s all on me.’ And the whole caucus started booing [as if to say], ‘This is not on you,’” Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.) said as he left the meeting.
“I just felt like he’d been stewing over this. …. Like: ‘We lost, I’m the top person. It’s on me,’” Cleaver added. “And then the caucus did exactly what I wanted them to do: ‘Oh, no. This is not going to go down like this. You’re not [to blame].'”
That demonstration of support for Jeffries in the Democrats’ first all-caucus meeting since Election Day forecasts an easy victory for the minority leader in the party’s leadership elections, which are slated to take place next week. Cleaver predicted the vote within the caucus would be unanimous.
The meeting came as Democrats are licking their wounds following an election cycle that will put President-elect Trump back into the White House for a second term and leave Republicans in control of all levers of power in Washington next year.
In the wake of their defeat, Democrats are scrambling for answers to what went wrong — and who’s at fault.
Some are blaming President Biden, who had masked his apparent feebleness for months before taking himself off the ballot in July. Others are pointing fingers at Vice President Harris for not taking greater steps to distance herself from Biden in a cycle when voters were anxious about high costs and eager for change. Still others have blamed party leaders more broadly for elevating culture war issues, including transgender rights, which became a powerful messaging tool for Trump and Republicans late in the campaign.
Those grievances were largely set aside during Wednesday’s meeting of House Democrats, which focused largely on the introduction of new members who are coming to Capitol Hill for the first time. Reporters outside the room could hear cheering and applause throughout the two-hour gathering. One lawmaker called it “a pep-rally.”
But at least one lawmaker was given the floor to voice grievances about how Democratic leaders had made his campaign more difficult.
Rep. Vicente Gonzalez (D-Texas) urged the party brass not to pressure frontliners like himself to take tough votes on issues they know will be difficult to defend in their districts.
“I got clobbered on all the transgender messaging in my district, and it was very painful,” Gonzalez said. “All I’m saying is: Don’t ever whip me to take votes that I know are losers in my district.”
Still, even Gonzalez, who survived a tough challenge to win a fifth term in a heavily Hispanic district won by Trump, wasn’t ready to point fingers at Jeffries.
“He’s accepting the blame, right. But I don’t really blame him, to be honest with you,” Gonzalez said.
