Dem
47
GOP
53
It is no secret that many Democrats are calling for new and younger leadership. Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) is 49, got the message, and wanted to show the voters that she did. To demonstrate that she got it, on a podcast last week, Slotkin said: "Every day there's a debate within the party about the path forward. That's why I believe we need significant new leadership. The old models are no longer working, and that includes the Democratic Party." Then she went on to say that both chambers of Congress needed new leaders. Talk about mistaking a hornet's nest for a piñata.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) is 75 and past his prime. There is a lot of speculation that AOC will challenge and beat him in 2028. He won't be missed by many. But House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) is a whole other kettle of fish. He is the first Black leader of either party in either chamber of Congress. Slotkin's remark about replacing him did not go over well with the Congressional Black Caucus, to put it mildly. In fact, they were outraged.
The CBC, which consists of only Democrats, accused Slotkin of "posturing for higher office in 2028," which certainly contains a kernel of truth. After all, she might just be available for the veep slot in 2028 if the nominee wanted a youngish white woman from a key swing state. She hasn't expressed a preference for favorite nominee yet, but it won't be Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-PA), Gov. J.B. Pritzer (D-IL), or Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA), since two Jewish candidates would make Israel an even bigger issue than it already is.
The CBC also pointed to Slotkin's votes to confirm multiple members of Donald Trump's Cabinet. This is somewhat defensible because if the opposing party controls the Senate and simply automatically votes down every presidential nominee, it won't be possible to assemble a Cabinet at all and the country will be even less governable than it now is. Slotkin understands that some day there could be a Democratic president and a Republican Senate so a knee-jerk opposition to every nominee could incite payback down the road.
The CBC wrote: "House Democrats don't need a lesson on reading the political moment from someone who handed Donald Trump one of the most corrupt Cabinets in American history. Voting to confirm Kristi Noem and six other Trump Cabinet secretaries is not the posture of someone who understood the moment'." Still, Noem did serve in Congress for 8 years and was governor of South Dakota for 6 years, so at the time of her nomination, on paper, she was actually one of the more qualified nominees. Also, Slotkin was probably hesitant to shoot down one of the few women Trump appointed. Only later did it become clear what Noem was going to do in her flying bedroom and outside of it.
The message here is that age and race are going to be in conflict sometimes going forward and that dealing with it will be messy. It took many years for Black leaders to achieve power and their supporters are not going to be keen on them being pushed aside because they are too old. (V)