The Brutal Math Of Pro-Democracy Politics

Adam G: As we all know the Democratic Party is widely disliked, with a 34% approval rating. The brand is tarnished, and it seems to me the only way to turn things around is what happens to companies in receivership - to restore confidence, there needs to be a major shakeup in leadership.

The problem is, typically, there is a challenge to the leadership following an election (when the Party loses seats or doesn't gain as many as predicted), and we can't really wait until November, 2026. By then, Trump will have entrenched his regime beyond extraction (if he hasn't already).

What do you think are the chances we'll manage to replace Schumer and Jeffries (and some others at the top) with some actual fighters, like Murphy and AOC (or similar) before 2026? And how would that happen, if it can?

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Mid-session leadership elections are obviously rare, but they’re not that rare, at least in the GOP. House Republicans forced John Boehner out of power in 2015 then actually deposed Kevin McCarthy less than a decade later.

Now that’s partially a function of the fact that, by constitutional design, the Speaker is elected by the entire House, which means a tiny dissident faction can team up with the opposition party to vacate the chair. There’s a procedure for it written into the House rules each new term. By contrast, House and Senate minority and majority leaders are elected much more informally by party caucuses, and that makes them harder to dislodge.

An embattled House speaker with a 230 member majority will typically need to keep 218 of those members on side. The House majority leader can hang on with just 116 of them.

And it’s not just that the math is hard.

Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries derive much strength from the fact that they need support from only half their members to stay in power. They also both raise a lot of money for the party and its candidates. Jeffries derives additional support for a few decent reasons:

1. He’s relatively new at top, and relatively young as well;

2. House Democrats didn’t dramatically underperform in 2024—Jeffries could credibly argue that state-level failures in New York and North Carolina cost him the speakership;

3. He didn’t break faith with the Democratic electorate by voting to fund Trump’s government in March.

For all these reasons, and probably others, they will be hard to dislodge before the midterms. But if Schumer helps line up votes to fund Trump’s government again, and the anti-Trump protest movement rises against him, it could happen. It would require 24 members of the Democratic caucus to line up behind an alternative and call a leadership vote during a meeting—there’s no constitutional formalism around it.

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BJ: It's so confusing: the more I read/listen, the more I wonder. How do the dems win anything without the big umbrella/stick/coalition that includes the progressives, the true & lite greens, the "centrists" (anti-crime? YIMBY? pro-union?), the discontented and horrified republicans and the - gawd help us all - "swing" voters, who seem so disconnected from democratic practice that they vote for whatever whoever will keep the sales tax down, the property values up, the rent stable, the crime and wages to a minimum and will talk to pollsters and The Run-Up explaining how their inconsistent and variable "interest" in elections is normal and something we should be listening to? (Dangling participles notwithstanding.)

What are we supposed to do to recalibrate/listen (in the Mamdani sense) and - yes - hate to admit it - but how do we FIGHT this shite? After listening to you and Matt talk about the options, he seemed to think lefties were a big part of the problem, but moderation seems to help about as much as strongly-worded letters. What do you (and others you talk to) think right now about this intractable-but-engaging challenge?

I’ll be writing more about this in the coming days. Not sure if it’ll be in the form of a single essay or thoughts scattered over multiple pieces, but the short version is: There’s no way for Democrats to win in today’s America without uniting large factions that disagree in the abstract about the role of the state in the economic life of citizens. I don’t think these differences are as huge as the people embroiled in factional warfare do, and they’re tiny compared to the differences between liberals and Republicans. But if the factions are intent on fighting each other, then it doesn’t really matter what I think.

I do think they should cop to it, though: Factional infighting around these disagreements is poisonous in the current context, and finding common ground—temporary or lasting—around more fundamental principles is the only way out.

Let me explain...