Some leaders lose badly and regroup. Hakeem Jeffries lost three endorsed congressional candidates in one night, announced the next morning that he and Zohran Mamdani have “agreed to strongly disagree,” and then went to the Capitol to stand next to Republican Speaker Mike Johnson and deposit content into a time capsule for Americans in 2076, which is the activity he chose for the morning after the worst primary night of his leadership tenure, and which suggests either extraordinary institutional grace or an extraordinary capacity to compartmentalize.
Brad Lander beat Jeffries’s endorsed candidate Dan Goldman 66-34 in New York’s 10th Congressional District, a margin that is not a close race that went the wrong way so much as a 32-point statement delivered to the Minority Leader’s political operation by his own party’s voters. Darializa Avila Chevalier beat Jeffries’s endorsed candidate Adriano Espaillat, a five-term incumbent Jeffries had explicitly backed. Claire Valdez won the 18th. All three of Jeffries’s picks lost. All three of Mamdani’s picks won. When Jeffries appeared on the screen at Mamdani’s Brooklyn watch party, according to The Intercept, the crowd chanted: “You’re next! You’re next!” Jeffries was not there to hear it in person. He was preparing for his morning schedule, which included the time capsule.
Before the results came in Tuesday, Jeffries told reporters, according to The Intercept, that he and Mamdani have “agreed to strongly disagree” and that “a handful of primaries that go in one direction or the other in a given state or two aren’t going to reshape who we are as House Democrats.” All three went in one direction. In one state. On one night. The phrase “agreed to strongly disagree” is the language of a man who has absorbed a 32-point defeat and decided that describing it as a philosophical difference is more dignified than describing it as what it is.
The Intercept’s Katherine Krueger wrote Thursday that Jeffries’s political operation has sneeringly referred to any left-wing challenge as coming from “Team Gentrification.” Team Gentrification won all three races on Tuesday night. The label did not survive the evening it was designed to dismiss.
The time capsule is sealed. Its contents are undisclosed. Future Americans in 2076 will open it and read whatever Jeffries deposited on the morning after losing three races by combined margins that required a calculator. The capsule will not mention the watch party chant.
When the House Minority Leader describes a 32-point defeat as agreeing to strongly disagree, with whom exactly is he disagreeing?
Sources
The Intercept: Democrats Must Move Left or Become Irrelevant
HuffPost: Sour Jeffries Says Mamdani Has ‘Work To Do’ After Candidates Oust Incumbents
