The Hegseth Vote Was Jeffries's First Big Test. He Failed.

By not showing discipline on the Pete Hegseth impeachment vote, Democrats seem poised to repeat the mistakes of the past. The post The Hegseth Vote Was Jeffries s First Big Test. He Failed. appeared f

Eoin Higgins is the author of “Owned: How Tech Billionaires on the Right Bought the Loudest Voice on the Left.”

Democrats rolled into Washington this week fresh off a generational sweep election on the promise of affordability for Americans and accountability for the Trump administration.

But on Tuesday night, Democrats in the House failed the first test of their incoming majority. An impeachment resolution introduced Monday by Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., targeting Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, one of the main architects of the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran, provided Republicans with a chance to score an early victory.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and the chamber’s Democratic leadership failed to take advantage, as 11 Democrats missed a critical vote that would have kept the resolution alive. The attempt failed by a slim margin, 211 to 204; Massie told The Intercept on Wednesday that even if the missing Democrats showed up he was sure House Speaker Mike Johnson could have rallied his members and made up the difference anyway. Until the new term begins, the chamber is still controlled by the GOP.

Nonetheless, the vote was a chance to send a message to the White House. One was sent: that of a disorganized, dysfunctional caucus. Other Democrats sought to take advantage of the misstep, noting that they were unwilling to miss the vote—Rep. Jasmine Crockett of Texas said she rerouted around traffic, and Rep. Pat Ryan of New York made it the day after back surgery.

“No matter what, I wasn’t going to allow traffic to keep me from that vote,” Crockett told MS NOW. “It was just that important to me.”

When asked about the absences, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who was present for the vote, offered only “someone may have had a health issue” as an explanation.

House members who missed the vote blamed a number of factors for their absence, including traffic. On Wednesday, all of those same House Democrats save Rep. Haley Stevens (Mich.) began to offer explanations. Rep. Jonathan Jackson (Ill.) told TMZ DC that his “traffic jam”-related absence was “inexcusable.” He wasn’t the only one to blame traffic — Reps. Marilyn Strickland (Wa.) and Laura Gillen (N.Y.) also cited D.C. gridlock as the reason they missed the vote; Rep. Julia Brownley (Calif.) said she was “rushing” to the vote but missed it. Reps. Nancy Pelosi (Calif.), Lou Corea (Calif.), and Frederica Wilson (Fla.) were all out of town.

Momentum lost can’t be regained. If Jeffries doesn’t understand that, he’s not the man for the job.

Rep. Melanie Stansbury (N.M.) offered a front-facing video apology to constituents. Rep. Steven Horsford (Nev.) took “full responsibility” in a floor speech. And Rep. Brittany Pettersen (Colo.) acknowledged that she was at a super PAC event and said there was “no excuse” for missing the vote.

Expressing regret is a good start. It shows these lawmakers are aware that their actions are antithetical to where their voters are at this moment and are adjusting accordingly. It’s not enough.

Leadership was asleep at the wheel. As whip, Rep. Katherine Clark should have kept the caucus in line. (It’s worth noting that Clark officially launched a bid for majority leader last week.) A number of reps who blamed traffic were previously at an event hosted by the group Elect Democratic Women, which receives some of its funding from AIPAC. The event overlapped with the impeachment resolution vote; Clark is a cofounder of the group.

“Republicans just blocked the House from impeaching Pete Hegseth,” Clark posted on X after the vote—failing to take responsibility for her party’s own lack of discipline.

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Democrats missing a vote to hold one of the main figures in the war on Iran accountable so they could attend a fundraiser is so tailor-made for progressive complaints over the state of party leadership, it’s hard to believe.

Jeffries tried to spin the vote as only a temporary reprieve for Hegseth, but he didn’t telegraph much willingness about holding his caucus to account.

“I haven’t had a conversation with anyone on the floor team about what may or may not have happened in terms of the Hegseth resolution, but this is not the end of it. It’s just the beginning,” he told Politico. Most critically, he accepted no responsibility for the stunningly bad optics of having members of his caucus no-show, even if it likely wouldn’t have moved the needle.

This never should have happened in the first place. It was the result of a series of decisions by Jeffries and Clark about the vote that made clear it wasn’t important.

Momentum lost can’t be regained. If Jeffries doesn’t understand that, he’s not the man for the job purely on tactical grounds, and he should lay no claim to being a party standard-bearer to steer us through the next two years of Trump’s America.

Jeffries and his party seem doomed to repeat the past. In 2009, when President Barack Obama came into the White House on the back of a change election that gave Democrats huge majorities in Congress, including a filibuster-proof supermajority in the Senate, the party hobbled itself out of the gate by preemptively declining to pursue justice for the many crimes of eight straight years of George W. Bush.

“We need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards,” Obama told ABC News’s George Stephanopoulos in January 2009, effectively ending any hope of accountability for the outgoing administration’s torture program and myriad other misdeeds. The ramifications of that decision arguably led to the war on Iran, a bipartisan immigration-deportation regime, and the end of Roe.

Democratic voters don’t want the party to rest on its laurels, they want blood.

Now, with a Republican president who is hated even more than W—something that would have seemed impossible to imagine almost 18 years ago—the Democratic Party’s establishment wing appears ready to repeat those failures. Taking on Trump and his corrupt, violent administration was one of the main messages that flipped House and Senate seats across the country but the party’s current leaders are allergic to action.

Entrenched Democrats also don’t seem interested in any sort of accountability. Stevens, the Michigan Democrat who broke ranks with her party and endorsed Republican Mike Rogers for Senate rather than back Abdul El-Sayed, was under pressure in the days before and after the election, with even establishment kingmaker Rep. Jim Clyburn signaling openness to expelling her from the caucus. By Tuesday morning, Pelosi — always in touch with party leadership — seemed to throw cold water on the idea: “I’m not supporting kicking her out…. Let’s focus on the very positive.”

This is such a complete misunderstanding of the mood of the electorate, one wonders if it’s intentionally obtuse. Democratic voters don’t want the party to rest on its laurels, they want blood. Anyone who’s been to a liberal rally since the start of the second Trump term can tell you that the signage is calling for, at minimum, accountability, not immediate compromise.

If Democrats rubber-stamp Jeffries as speaker and fail to adopt a more aggressive legislative and investigative approach, frustrations within the caucus and among the base will only continue to mount.

Jeffries is downplaying dissent, but this is more than just a battle between two wings of the Democratic Party. Democrats in New York have been looking to unseat the leader for years, frustrated with his closeness to AIPAC and financial institutions. He’s the kind of Democrat the base is fed up with, and that exasperation is widespread; polling shows just how deeply unpopular he is.

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Now, multiple incoming and incumbent Democratic reps have told reporters that constituents and activist groups are demanding they not vote for Jeffries as speaker.

There is an alternative gaining steam: Rep. Ayanna Pressley, the Massachusetts progressive and member of the original “Squad” who were first elected in 2018. Pressley has an uphill battle and has not yet announced that she’s interested in the job. The left is interested.

Voters gave Democrats a clear mandate on Election Day for what they want to see in Washington. Holding this administration accountable should be one of the top priorities. If the party fails to do all it can to advance that goal, it will once again earn its reputation for preferring failure to action. We should all push the next Congress to act as the exception to that rule—and they can start by picking a new speaker to meet the moment.

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