Democrats Prepare for Leadership Battles in the House and Senate

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0:17From the opinion pages of The Wall Street Journal, this is Potomac Watch. it's battle line friday in washington as senate democrats form up to elect a new leader and house republicans line up behind their own new chief all on today's edition of potomac watch from the wall street journal editorial page i am joe sternberg your intrepid host and i am joined today by my colleagues wall street journal columnists kim strassel and barton swain and And Kim and Barton, I guess we should probably start in the Senate. Now, I mean, the background here is that you always have the election out in the countryside.

0:56And then a couple of weeks later, we have the series of elections here in Washington to decide who's actually going to be running the show. Both the majority and the minority parties in both chambers have to select leaders. And this year, it seems to be an exciting process in some unexpected ways. I mean, certainly the Republicans are having to reckon with their defeat and we've got some leadership changes going on there. I am a bit more surprised that there seem to be rumblings about leadership changes on the Democratic side, given that their old leaders are the one who have just led them to this big victory.

1:35um so kim i i wonder if it's worth starting in the the senate so you know chuck schumer who people have heard of a democratic leader for coming up on on 10 years at this point he slotted into that job in 2017 he's been around for a long time you know certainly would have i thought had been a sure bet to take a continue in the leadership role now that they're in the majority it's got What a challenge now from Chris Van Hollen from Maryland, who most people probably have not heard of. I'm trying to unpack exactly what's going on here. I would name two reasons why this is happening. One of them is just Democratic Party litmus tests, right?

2:20If you look at Chuck Schumer and Chris Van Hollen, they're almost identical on policy views. But there are a couple that are a little different. One is that Chuck Schumer has never come out to endorse abolishing health care for all Americans and signing up for Medicare for all. Also, Chuck Schumer has never been as vehemently anti-Israel as the left of the party has come to be. That's where Van Hollen is a little different than him. These are vanishingly small differences, but these also happen to be litmus test issues for the left now. So they can't bear the idea that Chuck Schumer might not be exactly where they are on everything that they care about.

3:01So ergo, he must go. Doesn't matter that he just won Senate Democrats 56 seats. Must go. But also, even if it doesn't work, it's a little warning to those guys. Right. Like do exactly what we want or your head is on the chopping block. Chris Van Hollen, as I like to say to people, everyone's all excited about this. a challenge to Schumer. And, you know, this is a rebellion that could get some legs. But what I always like to point out to people is having some difficulties with your existing leader does not translate necessarily into support for the specific person who is opposing them or challenging them.

3:39And if you look at the Senate, the Schumer backers, there is a deep well there. These are people that owe him years of favors. He got them committee assignments. He He made sure their bills were passed. He's helped them get reelected. You know, and the number of people who have already come out to say that they'll support him. Brian Schatz, who's going to be the number two, Angus King, Chris Coons, Sheldon Whitehouse, Kirsten Gillibrand, Ruben Gallegos. The list goes on and on. Even Ben Holland came out and says, well, you know, I can count about 10 people who would back me. OK, well, that doesn't really get you anywhere with 56.

4:13You've got to convince half. Now, the unknown thing here is time. Their leadership election is not until December 1st, and that could give time for some momentum to build. His other worry is secret ballot. They do this. So you could have plenty of these people saying, yeah, I got your back, Chuck, and then, you know, knife them when nobody's looking. In my mind, I'm still thinking Schumer is probably the guy to back. I'm just going to add to what Kim said and paint a slightly darker picture and point out that Chuck Schumer has one characteristic that Chris Van Hollen does not and others do not, and that is that he is Jewish.

4:50Okay. Now, he is not as pro-Israel as I would like him to be. And I think he's quite weak on that issue. But Van Hollen, I've spent the weekend going back through some old press clippings because Van Hollen's been in the he was in the House. He's been in Congress forever. I think he won the Senate seat in 2016. But for years, he was a very staunch supporter of Israel. There was no there was no indication that he was even squishy on this issue. And then suddenly, a few years ago, he turns into an anti-Israel or let's say, charitably anti-Zionist or something maniac. And this is all fairly pretty, pretty obviously calculated.

5:35It's sort of discreditable that he chose to recruit the ascendant progressive base in this way. But such is the case, in my view. I kind of share some of Kim's confusion about what this leadership campaign would actually be about. And it just so happens that, you know, Barton, you've been perusing the archives, but we have a more recent clip of Van Hollen unchained in his own words that we can play now and then try to get a handle on what this is actually about. What's changed was the sense of how this is a generational opportunity for the Senate to respond to the call of the American people for change.

6:19The scale and scope of this victory, 56 Senate Democratic seats, really gives us a mandate and the votes to do big things. But it should be very clear, while voters have rejected the Trump policies, they've not yet hired Democrats. They've given us a chance. We have to earn their trust. And my view is that you can't earn that trust with old leadership. You need to move on to new leadership. Now, just a quick observation about this theme of generational change here. I did some of my own research and have determined that Chuck Schumer is 75 years old. Chris Van Hollen is 67. So this would be a significant generational change that we are talking about here.

7:06I mean, more to the point, I guess something that I would throw out to both of you that I found so interesting about that is that, I mean, clearly this talk about Van Hollen, which is coming from the left within the party, is a desire on the part of some of these firebrands that have just been swept into victory by this blue wave earlier this month to achieve big things. although it's notable that he didn't want to say exactly what those big things might be, probably because I assume there's got to be some discomfort in some corners of the Democratic Party that some of the biggest big things like Medicare for all might not actually be entirely popular if they were to go down that route.

7:47You do kind of find yourself in the situation where there's this desire for change, for big action. But they do have this constraint. The midterm was more obviously a vote against President Trump and his manner of governance than it was for Democrats, even though Democrats have been the big beneficiary of this. And I would think that one consideration in this leadership race would be which of the two of them between Chuck Schumer and Chris Van Hollen has better political instincts to understand that. I'll say two things. just on the Democratic caucus in general. And the first is that it's just very unfortunate that Abdul El-Sayed won in Michigan because that victory will prove in the minds of the more left wing, both in the House and the Senate, that you can hold extreme and in some cases repugnant views and still win in a purple state.

8:56So you're not limited to deep blue districts and deep blue states. And that is going to energize them and probably make the caucus unreasonable in ways that it might not have been otherwise. On the other hand, here's my optimistic take about the coming Democratic Senate. In some ways, I think Democrats might have been a little too successful for their own good, at least if they're hoping for gigantic transformative change and revolutionary legislation and all the rest. And for this reason, we now have five, six, maybe seven Democrats in the Senate beginning in January who are from either purple or red states.

9:50You have Josh Turek from Iowa, Annie Andrews from South Carolina. You have Scott Cullum from Mississippi, of all places. Sherrod Brown, of course, is back from Ohio. He's fairly moderate, I would say. Maybe the moderate label for him gets overblown. But Adam Hamilton in Kansas. And assuming Mary Peltola wins in Alaska, she's at least a non-progressive. So you add Fetterman to that list, and that's a caucus that, a sort of sub caucus that can put the brakes on some of the things like, you know, getting rid of the filibuster or, you know, stacking the Supreme Court or whatever kind of extreme change the Democrats want to make.

10:39That's my hopeful take for the Senate going forward, where at least may not see the sort of frightening things that a lot of people in the middle and on the right fear we might. Can I make a quick observation here? Just that Democrats understand that even if they were to get some of this across the finish line, you know, it's going nowhere, right, that the Trump White House is going to veto it. So in my mind, this whole new push by Bernie Sanders to have this giant reconciliation bill that's going to include a wealth tax and probably massive changes to Medicare and all of this. It's really designed about pressuring whoever the ultimate Democratic nominee is in 2028 to make that their platform, right?

11:23It's about saying this is what the Democrats now stand for and you would be the odd man out if you don't do it. There's a risk there though because of what Barton just said. If you go and you do that grand experiment and you put that reconciliation bill on the floor and you can't get enough votes to pass it, that's huge egg on your face. And so they're going to have to think about that. We are going to take a short break. And when we come back, we'll talk a little bit about the bigger picture for a democratic legislating agenda in the next Congress with the Potomac Watch from the Wall Street Journal.

11:56Congress has talked about permitting reform for decades. Now it's time to actually do it and secure our affordable energy future. Pass permitting reform now. Paid for by the American Petroleum Institute.

12:12This is Matthew Hennessey, the editor of Free Expression. I want to personally invite you to come check out what we're doing. Signing up for the newsletter couldn't be easier. Just go to our homepage. Directly below the Wall Street Journal logo, you'll find the magic words, free expression wedged between opinion and arts. There's an option to sign up for the newsletter right at the top of our section. Just hit that button and you'll start getting the world's hardest working newsletter delivered directly to your inbox Monday through Friday. If you aren't a journal subscriber, the newsletter is free, but we are going to need your email address.

12:48There's a lot of fun stuff in the newsletter that you can only read in the newsletter, and I don't want you to miss any of it. Sign up for free expression today. We'll see you in your inbox. Welcome back to Potomac Watch from the Wall Street Journal editorial page. I am Joe Sternberg, joined by my colleagues Barton Swaim and Kim Strassel. I think that this leads into a broader discussion about what would you do if you were Democrats in Congress right now? Because, I mean, certainly we've been talking about the Senate because they have a leadership contest brewing. I mean, one dog that is not barking here right now is the House leadership.

13:29I mean, my sense is that Hakeem Jeffries is currently on track to be elected speaker by Democrats in the incoming House, although I guess we have a couple of months. Things can always change. So something that I have been thinking a bit about is what does that agenda look like? I mean, if you were a Democrat, and as we heard Chris Van Hollen say a minute ago, you still have to convince American voters to trust you with government. You have to finish making that sale because it's not a done deal yet. What does that look like? And so I think that one issue that a lot of their base is going to be arguing for impeachments and investigations and that form of accountability to try to discredit the Trump administration.

14:18You know, do they try serious legislating even just to get some messaging bills out? I mean, Barton, what is your advice to them? They've never sought my advice before. the new um the squad as we used to call it has grown from uh seven to about 16 members by my count and it's now calling itself the block i guess on one hand that sounds impressive on the other of course the the house majority itself is larger so that somewhat dilutes the leverage held by the the the block and but i don't think they're going to see it that way and they have some allies outside that, those 16 on things like Medicare for all and the wealth tax and certainly impeachment and so on.

15:06That group is going to lead them to disaster if they listen to it. And my advice to Hakeem Jeffries would be to not promise anything, which they're trying to get him to do on a number of issues. The Republicans best shot to get a lot of its members back would be for Democrats to listen to that bloc and treat it as some kind of newly ascendant and important voice in American politics. Kim, there does seem to be this tension here where some of these Democratic candidates that got the most attention from the media, certainly during the campaign, the party's most liberal members, whether it was some of these DSA candidates in House races or Abdul El-Sayed with his Senate campaign in Michigan were not necessarily, in El-Sayed's case, the biggest winners in the midterm and also are not necessarily in the kinds of districts or states that Democrats need to be able to win reliably if they want to have a majority moving forward.

16:08So I guess it does seem like a big part of the challenge here, is it not, is how do you tell some of your most popular members and those members who are most popular with your base, particularly in the activist class that basically you have to ignore them for the good of the party. Well, we call those guys the majority makers. And for the record, they actually, after this election, they dramatically outnumber, as Barton was saying, the bloc, which, by the way, to me, just sounds Soviet, by the way, like the bloc. At least they're not calling themselves the blob. Yeah, I guess that's true. So what I'm going to be curious to see here is whether or not Democrats repeat the mistake they made in the wake of 2006 and 2008, went out, recruited a bunch of great candidates, got some got a huge majority in the House and then made all of those majority makers walk the plank by voting for Obamacare and Obama's climate agenda.

17:08and they got wiped out in 2010 and start over again. And that's the big choice facing Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer here. The smart thing, since you asked, is to replicate the strategy that you saw, for instance, that Newt Gingrich used when Bill Clinton was president, is you take an issue that is very much weighing on the American mind, that has public interest, and one example then was welfare reform, and then you push for a sensible change where you get a lot of your ambitions done. You're not going to get all of it because you have to negotiate with the president, but you're going to be able to claim a victory and say, see this incremental change, this benefit that we made because of our majority in Congress.

17:54That isn't going to happen. I just feel like I can give that advice. But because there are issues like that. You could do, for instance, these questions of Obamacare subsidies. That is something that a lot of people are worried about. And health care costs in general. Right. So you prey on that and you try to force the Trump administration to do something. Will they be willing to restrain themselves to simply that or must the agenda instead be lowering the Medicare age for everybody? You know, when it comes to health care, their progressive base is going to want them to go big, big, big, big. And that's not going to be a sensible solution that is in any way something the White House might tolerate.

18:32Right. Kim, you've hit on another interesting issue that I think that we're probably not yet considering enough here when you were talking about the potential for deals with the Trump administration, because I have been wondering, you know, certainly, look, the Democrats have won Congress. Obviously, in order to pass legislation, they would need to get his signature on something. And, you know, we have examples in history, including relatively recent history within the past couple of decades of a situation of a Congress from one party and a president of another actually cooperating to get legislation signed.

19:09Um, I've been wondering if today's Democrats can do that, uh, because so much of their campaigning is built around antipathy to Donald Trump. And you're going to potentially have this huge swirl of oversight investigations and maybe even an impeachment proceeding or two, uh, directed at Trump or other people within the administration. In that kind of environment, you know, would their base accept any legislation that Trump could sign? Or do they almost find themselves caught in this trap where if they pass something that he would sign, that by itself is taken by their core supporters as a sign of failure?

19:57My biggest fear when Donald Trump was elected the first time and the second time was that this guy's the ultimate dealmaker. And if you had smart Democrats that said like, hey, you want to make a deal like we can work on this together? He probably would have signed all kinds of terrible stuff, stuff that I think is terrible, at least. It's on paper. The signatures are there. Like we made the deal. Right. And instead, they have just thrown all that away because it's so much more important to just hate on him, hate on him. And that is the thing. Those opportunities are huge right now, even bigger than the first term, because Donald Trump is now looking forward to his legacy.

20:34Right. What more can he do before he leaves office? If they were to just show a modicum of sense, they could probably lure him into all kinds of stuff that would make the right lose its mind. But they're not going to. Absolutely true. And Kim, you've been saying this. I said this back in 2016. You did. Just work with the guy and he'll do a lot of what you want. They don't take our advice. I was sort of a little bit disheartened along these lines to see Hakeem Jeffries, who's a pretty savvy politician, when the announcement was made that Stephen Miller would be chief of staff. Now, I think none of us on this podcast or on the editorial page are huge fans of Stephen Miller.

21:23Certainly, I have my problems with him. But the kind of language that Hakeem Jeffries came out with, one statement said, Stephen Miller is a dangerous xenophobe and reckless extremist who has American blood on his hands. Wow. His presence in government should be eradicated like a malignant tumor. What is going on here? So I'm taking that in some some other language that he came out with as sort of a foreshadowing that Jeffries does not consider himself in a position to stand behind Donald Trump as he signs a lot of bills. I could be proven wrong on that, but I think they're going to squander the next two years on a lot of foolish stuff, performative stuff, impeachment investigations and no legislation, which in the long run, maybe we're better off if they don't get him to sign anything.

22:15I'm not sure, but it'll be ugly one way or another. We're going to take one more break. And when we come back, is there hope for Republicans after this midterm white belt? Congress has talked about permitting reform for decades. Now it's time to actually do it and secure our affordable energy future. Pass permitting reform now. Paid for by the American Petroleum Institute.

22:45From the opinion pages of The Wall Street Journal, this is Potomac Watch. Welcome back to Potomac Watch from the Wall Street Journal editorial page. I am Joe Sternberg with my colleagues Kim Strassel and Barton Swain. We should change gears for the last few minutes that we're together to talk about what's happening on the other side of the aisle, particularly with the Republicans in the House who now have a new leader. Alert listeners will remember that we talked about this a couple days ago when this race for the incoming House minority leader for the Republicans was underway. It has now been settled in favor of Jim Jordan of Ohio.

23:26And we can hear briefly from the man himself. Although it was a tough night, Morris, a week and a half ago, we got 35 new Republicans coming in. Amazing people. This newer, younger generation of Republicans that I think are going to help us reenergize our party. People like Austin Rogers from Florida, Michael Alfonso, 26-year-old from northern Wisconsin, Sidney Gruters from Tampa, Florida. We got all these young people, Jessica Steinman, a lawyer from Texas, all these new young people coming into our party who are going to help us show the American people why we're fighting for them. Even though Democrats say it, they're going to do all this crazy lawfare stuff and these crazy investigations.

24:06We're going to be fighting for American families. Kim, that's a really optimistic message. Do we believe it? Look, I think this is an opportunity for optimism for Republicans more than they have seen anything in, you know, maybe a decade or so ever since they've been in these endless leadership fights. And remember, I mean, Jordan and Steve Scalise ran against each other. That was one of the first times that there had just been like a solidly healthy, spirited competition between two incredibly well-qualified people for a while. You know, remember, we're looking at a decade of John Boehner being forced to resign.

24:45And then the caucus blocking Kevin McCarthy the first time around, going and having to recruit Paul Ryan to watch them. And then another bitter leadership fight and 15 rounds to get McCarthy elected as speaker. All of that has been the predecessor to this. This election looked very different. The left's description of why Republicans elected Jim Jordan, that he's just there, it proves that they're going to double down on the fight, fight, fight. I get that Jordan is known for being a bit pugilistic on air. You have to look at this guy's 20-year career. He has spent most of it. And this is what I found most fascinating.

25:22Most of it running the blocks of the party that were all about conservative policy. First, the Republican Study Committee. And when that group got a bit watered down, then the House Freedom Caucus. This is a guy about idea generation principles. And that is not what we've seen from Republicans. And it's arguably why they lost to the election. They didn't go into this race with any forward looking agenda about what they were going to do. You just heard Jordan there. I think he's going to be as focused as trying to come up with a House GOP agenda for the next year, but also as a precursor for the coming presidential race.

26:03And that's going to be really interesting to watch, especially as this White House moves very much into lame duck status and the attention moves to instead the parts of the party that are still live and viable and going forward. Barton, I mean, picking up on Kim's point, I mean, this whole notion that the problem with Jim Jordan would be the fight, fight, fight, I mean, it seems kind of ridiculous because that's what politicians are supposed to do. I mean, the problem Republicans have tended to have in recent leadership elections was not necessarily the fight, fight, fight. It was that they were fight, fight, fighting about nothing.

26:42And so, you know, surely to the extent that have managed to have a serious leadership election with serious candidates who are serious about ideas. I mean, Barton, we ought to be a bit optimistic about that, shouldn't we? It's also a positive thing that a few of the nuttier rabble rousers are gone. You won't have Marguerite Taylor Greene or Matt Gaetz or some people like that that I know of. Despite Mike Johnson's best efforts, most Republicans in the House in campaigning sort of took after Donald Trump, who doesn't explain anything. a great communicator who can't explain the first thing about any policy.

27:27I think back to that Medicaid reform, a very, very defensible reform on a number of levels. And they accomplished it, but they did not explain what they were doing. The best they could come up with is that they were going to kick illegal immigrants off of welfare rolls, which wasn't really the central point, and that we're going to get able-bodied adults out of their parents' basement. You know, just sort of insulting talk like that. My hope is that somebody like Jim Jordan can teach Republicans again to talk about policy and ideas. Well, I always think it's nice to go into the weekend on an optimistic note, so we should probably stop there before we put ourselves out of it.

28:09But thank you, Barton, and thank you, Kim, for your insights on this week's doings in Washington. And thanks to all of you for listening to Potomac Watch from the Wall Street Journal editorial page.

28:30affordable energy future. Pass permitting reform now. Paid for by the American Petroleum Institute.