Hakeem Jeffries. More of the same and more.

My art is on Instagram @klonskyart.

If we thought that Nancy Pelosi stepping down from House Democratic leadership meant a political shift, her replacement by Hakeem Jeffries demonstrated otherwise.

Jeffries has all the trappings of a progressive and none of the substance.

I mean he’s from Brooklyn for god’s sake.

Of course, so is the Democratic leader of the Senate, Chuck Schumer.

I’m not dismissing the fact that Jeffries is the first Black Congressperson to lead the House Democratic Caucus.

But two things immediately jump out at me.

His backstory is not encouraging.

In June 2018, a rare opportunity arose for Hakeem Jeffries. A bartender named Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez ousted then–Democratic Caucus chair Joe Crowley in a stunning primary upset in New York’s 18th Congressional District. Crowley’s old job was suddenly up for grabs, and Jeffries, then an ambitious 48-year-old representative from Brooklyn, started angling for the chairmanship. Jeffries’s main competition was Barbara Lee, his fellow Congressional Black Caucus member and one of the chamber’s staunchest progressives. Lee had seniority — she was 72 and had been in Congress for 15 years longer than Jeffries — but moderate Democrats were getting skittish about Ocasio-Cortez. According to Politico, a pro-Jeffries whisper campaign started calling attention to the fact that Lee had donated to her. Jeffries beat Lee by ten votes.

The result was hailed as the dawn of a new generation of Democratic leadership, and four years later, Jeffries has fulfilled that promise, after Nancy Pelosi announced Thursday she was stepping down as leader of the House Democrats, since she is expected to hand the reins to him. If Jeffries wins election November 30, he will, at age 52, be the first Black leader of either party in the House or Senate — a remarkable feat for someone who’s been in Congress for less than a decade.

His coronation is part of the Democrats’ effort to make the party’s leadership class younger and Blacker. Jeffries looks the part of a next-generation changemaker down to his campaign-trail tracksuits and Notorious B.I.G. quotes. But for the Democratic Establishment, his ascent has achieved something more urgent than passing the torch: keeping the party’s left flank at bay.

Barbara Lee, by the way, is a hero of mine.

She was the only Congressperson to vote against the Iraq War.

His election to lead the Democrats in the House suggests no change in the Party leadership’s strategy of attacking the Progressives in their own party, often with greater zeal than they have for going after the Republicans and MAGAs.

Then there is his connection to the corporate Democrats who push charter schools.

Diane Ravitch has that story here.

Hakeem Jeffries victory in the race for Democratic House caucus chair on Wednesday was a loss for progressive groups that rallied against him, but it was a victory for one national group in particular: Democrats for Education Reform, or DFER — a political action committee that funds candidates supportive of charter schools and is critical of teachers unions. DFER was founded in 2005 by a number of Wall Street leaders, with the mission, as co-founder Whitney Tilson explained it, “to break the teacher unions’ stranglehold over the Democratic Party.” (The Intercept)

By the way, DFER and I go back a dozen years to when Joe Williams, the guy who ran the organization back in 2013 threatened to kick my ass over my opposition to charter schools and their anti-teacher union crap.

Joe’s gone.

My ass remains unkicked.

With Jeffries running the Democratic Caucus in the House, DFER may be laughing today, but not the last laugh.