When the credits finally roll on this year’s blockbuster production of Democratic Governance, the names will be familiar. Joe Biden, Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi will tick by first. Then the breakout stars: intransigent conservatives Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema and Josh Gottheimer; stubborn progressives Pramila Jayapal and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Cori Bush. Familiar bit players will follow: Jim Clyburn, Steny Hoyer, Kamala Harris.
Only if you wait until the theater has emptied and the lights have come on will you see the name Hakeem Jeffries. As chair of the House Democratic Caucus, Jeffries is the party’s fifth in command in the people’s chamber. He’s a member of both of the caucuses that have arguably played the most important roles recently, both legislatively and electorally: the Congressional Progressive Caucus and the Congressional Black Caucus. And yet he’s been relatively silent in the party’s defining deliberations, a disappearing act made stranger by the fact that he is widely expected to take over as the new top-ranking House Democrat.
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