Mr. Jeffries, who began his career as a white-shoe corporate lawyer and later became a state assemblyman, was never a starry-eyed liberal. Before Andrew Cuomo’s spectacular downfall, he counted Mr. Jeffries as one of his top allies in the state. Mr. Jeffries’s tenure in Congress, which spans only a decade, overlapped with the rise of the New York socialist left, and he enthusiastically supported candidates who tried to beat the socialists back.
Unlike the young leftists who rose to power in 2019, Mr. Jeffries is a staunch supporter of Israel and privately run, publicly funded charter schools. He clashed with progressives who backed defunding the police in the wake of the George Floyd protests. “There will never be a moment where I bend the knee to hard-left democratic socialism,” Mr. Jeffries said as recently as 2021.
An effective speaker should never “bend the knee” to anyone, but if Mr. Jeffries is lucky enough to sit in the majority, he’ll have to start counting votes. One of the overlooked stories of the 2022 midterms was how many leftist or Squad-friendly candidates won elections. The old Justice Democrats strategy of contesting safe-blue seats is beginning to bear considerable fruit. Moderates are right that Democrats in the Bernie Sanders or Ilhan Omar vein have yet to prove they can win swing terrain — but they won’t have to to have tangible influence in Washington.
In addition to Democrats like Mr. Bowman and Ms. Pressley, Congress now has Maxwell Frost, the 26-year-old activist who won with Mr. Sanders’s strong support. Without much fanfare, Mr. Sanders was also able to anoint a potential successor in Vermont, elevating Becca Balint, a close ally, to the state’s lone House seat.
Mr. Frost and Ms. Balint are not alone in this new class. Summer Lee, who began her career as a Democratic Socialists of America ally and was backed by Justice Democrats, overcame furious opposition from the right to become a member of Congress from Pennsylvania. Greg Casar of Texas is another Justice Democrat who has now been sworn in. Delia Ramirez, a Chicago area Democrat, backs top policy prescriptions of the Squad like Medicare for All and a Green New Deal.
In the minority, they will be relatively impotent. Mr. Casar has talked about advocating for Mr. Biden to take more executive actions when possible, pointing to the need for stronger overtime rules and labor protections. For now, Mr. Jeffries can make peace with the broader progressive movement.
But these Democrats may seek their own places on influential committees like Rules and hope, over time, to sap the power of the legislative leader and force more debate on the House floor. In 2019, when the Squad first got to Washington and Ms. Pelosi became speaker again, they lacked leverage. Four votes wasn’t much to her — but 11 and counting may be another matter to Mr. Jeffries.
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