A confession first.
I am the District 13 Raven. Pennsylvania bird. Labor-loving, liberal, ink-black from crest to tail. My candidate lost this month, and my district sends John Joyce back to Washington, one of the President’s steadiest yes-men. So I have no say in who holds the Speaker’s gavel in January.
I am also a cartoon crow. We don’t vote anyway.
Still.
The blue dogs who remain in this party are working to keep Hakeem Jeffries from the Speaker’s chair. A note on terms. Around here, “blue dog” is shorthand. It names the old-guard streak in this party that is happy to count Black votes in Philadelphia, Atlanta and Detroit, and loses its nerve when a Black man reaches for the gavel. They won’t put it that way. They’ll talk about electability, tone, whether the country is ready. That is the same polite vocabulary that kept doors shut for a century and a half, said with a smile and a donor list. The caucus on Capitol Hill that carries the name can answer for itself.
Let’s climb a few branches and take the high view.
The elephant, walked to the middle of the room
Hakeem Jeffries would be the first Black Speaker of the House in the history of this country. That is no small thing. Two hundred and thirty-seven years of the gavel, and it has passed through white hands the whole way. Pelosi broke the gender line in 2007. Jeffries, her protégé, would break this one.
This old newsman suspects that fact sits somewhere near the root of the rebellion against him. You won’t hear it said on the record. The complaints that reach the microphones are about money, Israel and backroom meetings. They are real complaints. But a crow knows the difference between the noise in the branches and the thing that stirred the tree.
The second elephant
Jeffries is an AIPAC congressman. He takes AIPAC money at a time when AIPAC is backing conduct that a large share of this country can’t stomach.
Here are the numbers, kept separate the way they should be. This cycle, OpenSecrets counts about $49,600 from individual donors funneled through AIPAC, plus $11,700 direct from AIPAC’s PAC. The broader pro-Israel category comes to about $315,000 this cycle, his third-largest industry source. Sludge reported that AIPAC’s PAC sent $149,300 to his joint fundraising committee in May, earmarked by a hedge fund billionaire. It was the largest earmarked donation in that PAC’s history.
In July, more than half of House Democrats voted for a Massie amendment to pull $3.3 billion in military financing for Israel. Jeffries voted no. He called the amendment overly broad and wrote his colleagues that American policy in the Middle East must change. Fine words. The vote went the other way.
That is no small thing either.
The third elephant
In August, Jeffries sat down in New York with the fixer and son-in-law for this administration. They talked housing, immigration, the cost of living. The fixer and son-in-law suggested a follow-up with White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles.
Meetings like that come with the job. A Speaker has to know who he’ll be across the table from. The two men worked together on prison reform during the first Trump term. But a meeting like that is supposed to stay out of sight, and this one landed in the New York Times. It is now the headline grievance on a petition with more than 920,000 signatures asking House Democrats to pick someone else.
Also no small thing.
Let’s dance
I’ll be plain. I don’t like this argument. It weakens the left. Democrats just won the House big, on track for more than 250 seats, and the first thing on the menu is a food fight over the man who led them there. One senior progressive put the odds of Jeffries falling short at zero point zero. The bird agrees with the math.
But if they’re going to talk that way, let’s dance.
I have two offerings. Both are Black women. That takes the first elephant off the floor. The only casualty is Hakeem himself, a man who spent years being loyal to this party and would have plenty of right to feel cheated.
Offering one: Miss Maxine Waters
I would love to see Maxine Waters holding the gavel, for more reasons than this column has room for.
She has the chops. Thirty-five years in the House. She just won a nineteenth term in South Los Angeles. She ran the Financial Services Committee and stared down bank executives and Treasury secretaries without blinking. She gave the country “reclaiming my time,” three words a Speaker could put to good use.
The strike against her is age. She is 88 and about to become the oldest member of Congress. Then again, the Capitol is ancient. Half the building remembers the Carter administration from the inside. Still, the country spent two years arguing about an old man in the White House, and that argument isn’t over. It counts against her.
One more thing to weigh. Waters is in line to chair Financial Services again, where the subpoenas live. She can do more to correct this nation’s course from that chair than from the Speaker’s.
Offering two: Ilhan Omar
Then I hit on Ilhan Omar.
She sits on the far left edge of the House, so the question of whether she’d fight answers itself. She is not AIPAC-supported. And the President picked the fight with her personally. He called for her resignation days before the election.
Her district answered. She won a fifth term with about 76 percent, her best showing since her first race in 2018.
A Speaker Omar would be the balance of power personified, sitting across from the man who made her a target.
Her bigger weakness is seniority. Five terms is thin for the top job.
Here is why I love her anyway. I know her story. She fled civil war in Somalia as a child, grew up in a Kenyan refugee camp, came to Minnesota, and worked as a community nutritionist before she ran for office. I think she can heal this country the way Zohran Mamdani is healing New York, by showing people that Muslims are no enemy to be feared. They are another religious group among many. The liberal-minded people building a diverse, humanist society where we live together and do it well come from all walks. I trust Ilhan Omar to carry that message. I trust her to represent Black Americans and Muslim Americans in a way that lifts the rest of us along with them.
For the record, Mamdani is backing Jeffries. The mayor knows how the House counts. So does this bird.
Schumer is another story
Across the Capitol, Chuck Schumer says he’ll be reelected majority leader. He may be right. No senator has announced a challenge, and he needs only a majority of his caucus in a secret ballot. Give him his due. His recruits helped flip at least seven Republican seats.
But five incoming senators, Peggy Flanagan, Troy Jackson, Abdul El-Sayed, Juliana Stratton and Adam Hamilton, say they won’t back him. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders haven’t pledged to.
Schumer and Jeffries both come out of Brooklyn. Both sit near the top of the pro-Israel money tables. Through 2024, OpenSecrets has Schumer at about $1.73 million from pro-Israel PACs and individuals, a hair behind Jeffries. Hand them both the keys and the House and Senate get steered from the same borough by the same donor class. We can’t let New York centrists run the Democratic Party.
Ms. Warren would be much better from a labor point of view. She built the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau from an idea on paper into an agency that clawed money back from banks for working people. This cycle she backed Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan against the leader’s pick. El-Sayed is headed to the Senate. She sat in the so-called Fight Club of senators who thought Schumer was tilting too hard toward centrists. A union hall would know her on sight. Put her in the leader’s chair and the Senate has someone who talks about wages the way a steward talks about a grievance, with the contract in one hand and the receipts in the other.
The view from the top branch
Jeffries will probably get the gavel in January. History will get its first Black Speaker. I’ll take that and be glad of it.
But the party should hear what the base is saying about money and meetings, on both sides of the Capitol. If the Speaker-to-be can’t hear it, there are other Black women in that caucus who already have. If the leader across the hall can’t hear it, there’s a senator from Massachusetts who has been saying it for years.
Twelve counties, every day, no appointment necessary. — Silas Corvin.
Sources:
- The American Prospect, “What the Jeffries–Blue Dog Spat Is Really About,” Sept. 4, 2026
- The Hill, Jeffries on Blue Dog rule defection, Sept. 2026
- Axios, “House Democrats ‘inundated’ with anti-Jeffries calls,” Nov. 6, 2026
- Yahoo News / Axios, “Anti-Jeffries Speaker Petition Tops 920K Signatures,” Nov. 6, 2026
- Newsweek, “How much has Hakeem Jeffries received from AIPAC? Israel stance explained,” Nov. 6, 2026
- AP via PBS NewsHour, report on Jeffries’ private August meeting in New York, Aug. 23, 2026
- ABC News, report on Jeffries’ private August meeting, Aug. 2026
- NBC News live blog, 2026 election results, Nov. 4, 2026
- NBC Los Angeles, “Maxine Waters wins reelection,” Nov. 2026
- IBTimes UK, “Ilhan Omar Wins Fifth Term,” Nov. 4, 2026
- Sahara Reporters, Omar reelection amid Trump attacks, Nov. 4, 2026
- Newsweek, Omar’s biggest election win in eight years, Nov. 2026
- The Washington Times, “Schumer confident of reelection as Senate majority leader amid left-wing calls for new leadership,” Nov. 5, 2026
- Democracy Now!, “Incoming Freshman Senators Call for New Leadership to Replace Top Democrat Chuck Schumer,” Nov. 6, 2026
- Newsweek, “If Not Schumer, Who? 4 Favorites to Replace Senate Democratic Leader,” Nov. 2026
- Fox News, “Warren defies Schumer as Dem civil war explodes over must-win Senate race,” July 20, 2026
- PBS NewsHour / AP, “Schumer had a plan to win back the Senate, but some Democrats aren’t on board,” Mar. 31, 2026
- The Hill via AOL, “Murphy deflects question on Schumer’s future as Senate leader,” Mar. 2026
