For years, prominent Democrats warned us against Elon Musk and the latent authoritarianism of Donald Trump. But now that these two billionaires have created a constitutional crisis as they thumb their noses at democracy and lay waste to the government, the leadership of the supposed opposition party is flailing.
House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries pathetically unveiled a new nickname for Trump this week: “Captain Chaos.” People across the political spectrum cringed. As one conservative New York City councilwoman asked, “Why do they insist on making him sound cool?” The moment, to many, evoked Hillary Clinton’s ill-fated moniker “Dangerous Donald.”
Like his Senate counterpart Chuck Schumer, Jeffries seems entirely unequal to this moment. He has also started a — wait for it — “task force” on Trump and Musk’s destructive and illegal assaults on the federal government and its employees. In defense of this project, it does involve Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, one of the few House Democrats who does seem to be fighting tirelessly to expose and prevent the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) destruction. But the term “task force” almost seems deliberately chosen to sound pathetic and useless.
Earlier this month, Jeffries whined, “What leverage do we have?” Even respectable voices in the mainstream media are losing patience with him: a Bloomberg opinion headline Friday read, “Hakeem Jeffries needs to get it together.”
“It’s their government,” Jeffries has said of the Republicans. No, Hakeem, it is our government. The government belongs to the people, not to the unelected Elon Musk. Trump was elected president, but that does not make him “king,” as he proclaimed himself the other day on Truth Social when announcing the end of New York City’s hard-fought congestion pricing policy.
This Democratic weakness is particularly catastrophic given that people are ready to support opposition to…
Auteur: Liza Featherstone
