A MESSAGE FROM AMERICAN BEVERAGE

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Earlier this month, as Hakeem Jeffries was readying for his first major legislative battle with Republicans—over the multitrillion-dollar megabill that passed the House this week—he found himself temporarily distracted by a smaller, seemingly more personal attack from Ashley Etienne, a former Pelosi aide, who went on the record to rip Jeffries for his underwhelming leadership and for shutting out the Pelosi brain trust. The blunt-force criticism caused quite a stir on the Hill—not just because it was the type of thing people only say privately, but because, for some Democrats, Etienne’s description of Jeffries rang true. The newish minority leader is “doing very well” in many respects, she told Politico’s Rachael Bade, noting a few of his achievements since taking over from Pelosi at the end of 2022. But his biggest “failure,” she said, is that he’s not driving a unified message for the party, leaving Democratic members, surrogates, and advocates without coordinated talking points on TV. I’ve heard some similar complaints from Democrats over the past few weeks amid House negotiations over Trump’s “big beautiful bill.” Some feel that Jeffries wasn’t forceful enough and gave too little direction. The caucus’s messaging felt disorganized, chaotic, and aimless, several Democratic aides told me. Rank-and-file members need to be told exactly what to do, some argue, and they worry that Jeffries’ mild-mannered personality is too meek for the moment. “He’s not a general, and we’re in the fight for our lives,” one senior Democratic aide said. Of course, this being Washington, the thing that really stung was what Etienne said about why, in her view, Jeffries has been ignoring and alienating more experienced allies in Pelosi’s orbit. “Ego,” she said. “I hate to say it.”

A MESSAGE FROM AMERICAN BEVERAGE

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The allegation is at least a little self-serving, and probably a bit ego-driven itself. Etienne, a former comms aide to Pelosi and Vice President Kamala Harris, pitched herself for consulting work for Jeffries, two people told me, but was rebuffed. While Jeffries has hired a handful of former Pelosi policy staff and procedural experts, his communications team doesn’t include anyone from Pelosiworld, which has engendered some hard feelings and no small amount of backseat driving. But the interview touched a raw nerve. Jeffries and his team are extremely sensitive to criticism, and particularly comparisons to Pelosi—of which there have been many. Indeed, it would be impossible for any Democratic House leader not to measure themselves against the former speaker, who led the party for two decades. Few Democrats know leadership other than Pelosi leadership. She was, after all, feared, loved, respected, and dominant—both within her own party and among Republicans. Even Trump recognized her as a formidable opponent. The timing of the interview, and that it came from someone in Pelosiworld, made everything worse. Jeffries’ allies won’t soon forget it, and they want to make clear that the personal nature of the critique won’t be tolerated. “If I were downtown, I’d think twice about bringing someone willing to knife the leader for their own gain into my orbit,” a person close to Jeffries’ political operation said.

Whatever the merits of Etienne’s critique, Jeffries is unquestionably in a difficult spot. His leadership is still in the toddler stage, and he’s trying to go toe-to-toe with a president unconcerned with separation of powers and basic ethics, dismissive of court orders, eager to punish political opponents, and happy to threaten the media—all while the Democrats continue to lick their 2024 wounds. And that’s before you get to the actual job of legislating. As a minority leader, Jeffries has few tools to stop or even slow Trump’s agenda. But despite these staggering constraints, Jeffries has tried to meet the moment and fill the party’s leadership vacuum, at least for his caucus. Although Etienne complained about an absence of coordination with Democratic allies, his team has hosted seven calls with Democratic talkers, pollsters, and political staff since March—and Etienne has been invited to every one, per people familiar. She even attended and spoke up during one of them, according to one source. Jeffries aides told me she has access to his chief of staff and communications team. The calls, themselves, were coordinated at the behest of at least one former Democratic official, who asked the Democratic National Committee, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, and Jeffries to communicate better with Democratic allies. Only Jeffries acted. Schumer has retreated somewhat after being raked over the coals for helping Republicans keep the government open without extracting concessions, per one Democratic operative, and D.N.C. chair Ken Martin, who just got the job in February, has been struggling to find his footing. One participant on the calls said they were “quite candid,” and that the Jeffries team seemed to act on their suggestions. Even though Jeffries appears sensitive to comparisons with Pelosi, the two still speak often, both informally at gatherings and in more formal meetings. Pelosi, still, hasn’t offered unsolicited advice. During Democrats’ closed-door caucus meeting this week, before Republicans’ 1 a.m. Rules Committee session to mark up their Big Beautiful Bill, Jeffries told Pelosi that he was taking a page from her playbook and stocking a panel with Democrats offering hundreds of amendments—a tactic that couldn’t stop, but did delay, the process.

Jeffries has been fighting the party stagnation in other ways, too. He’s doing podcasts and straight-to-camera social media videos. He’s brought social media influencers to the Hill and sat down with nonpolitical media, including Stephen A. Smith. Days after Sen. Cory Booker’s record-breaking speech on the Senate floor, Jeffries held a daylong sit-in on the Capitol steps to protest the Republican agenda. He’s coordinated a litigation strategy with states and outside legal groups to challenge Trump’s legally dubious and/or outright illegal moves. “Not only is he doing as well as we expected, he’s doing better,” Rep. Brad Schneider, the head of the New Democrat Coalition, told me on Friday. Meanwhile, Rep. Max Rose, a Jeffries cheerleader who also attends the messaging calls, told me that he’s “never seen the caucus more united than right now.”

From the outside, the caucus does indeed look united. Jeffries has coalesced his caucus more so than around the time of the president’s joint-session address in March, when members went rogue, holding signs, boycotting the speech, and rolling their eyes at Trump (and at each other). Afterward, the party remained deeply divided over whether to vote for the Republicans’ government funding bill, even though all but one House Democrat eventually voted against it. (It was a different story in the Senate, as I wrote here.) This week, however, House Dems mostly sang from the same songbook over the BBB, bashing Republicans with stats about the number of people who could lose health insurance or SNAP benefits under the current bill. Every Democrat voted against it. But there remains a lot of consternation behind the scenes, and Jeffries is under a tremendous amount of pressure. Unlike Pelosi, who was a decisive and deliberate leader, Jeffries has moved away from the top-down approach, allowing for more input and discussion among members—which, of course, can be perceived as a lack of direction. While many rank-and-file members were once craving more input, some are now yearning for marching orders, which isn’t really Jeffries’ style. When Republicans were moving their bill through the committee process, Democratic committee leaders felt directionless at a critical moment; attendance on the bodies reviewing the G.O.P. bill was low and inconsistent; and they lacked a messaging and legislative response. To try and coordinate better, Jeffries’ office organized conference calls with senior committee staff to walk through the strategy. On one call, led by a Jeffries policy advisor, frustrated staff directors on the Energy and Commerce and Education and Workforce committees pressed Jeffries’ staff to make sure Democratic “butts [were] in chairs” during markups, and implored his office for a coordinated plan for amendments. The process improved after that, aides told me. Meanwhile, members’ staff have also questioned the staff structure in Jeffries’ office. Some believe it’s led to deficiencies. Jeffries’ comms staff is less than half the size of what Pelosi’s was, on par with some committees—which, obviously, have a fraction of the leader’s responsibility. Pelosi’s office also had dedicated communications staff that worked with the policy staff to ensure messaging memos were steeped in detail for rank-and-file members to transmit. I’m told that, now, members are craving these kinds of deeply researched, streamlined policy-based talking points. The comparisons to Pelosi will continue to haunt Jeffries, but Pelosi and her orbit—except for Etienne, of course—are extremely careful not to criticize him. They understand the microscope he’s under, and the amount of time it takes to learn the job. And publicly, Pelosi has only heaped praise on the leader. In a recent interview on PBS NewsHour, she called Jeffries a “master” at his job. “He’s so eloquent, he’s so forceful at getting the message across,” she said. Of course, whether he can win over the rest of the caucus remains to be seen.

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