What a difference a year makes.
Speculation about Biden’s political future has quieted after Democrats outperformed expectations during the November midterm elections. His toughest critics on the left are signaling they’ll work to help him secure a second term.
And perhaps most notably, last year’s dissent on Capitol Hill melted away over the past week as every Democrat voted — repeatedly — in support of Hakeem Jeffries for the House speakership. That was the type of showing Republican Kevin McCarthy could only long for as he worked through 15 votes over four bruising days to finally win backing from his party to take the gavel.
That unity is a shift for a Democratic Party built on fragile electoral coalitions that often begin to fray when it’s time to govern. But the dynamic was a tonic of sorts for lawmakers otherwise unhappy to be shifting to the House minority and spurred optimism that the party could stick together heading into the next campaign, when both Congress and the White House are at stake.
“It’s a very powerful feeling,” New Hampshire Democratic Rep. Annie Kuster said of Jeffries receiving all 3,179 votes for speaker of the 3,179 cast by his party’s House members. “It’s sort of a championship moment.”
Of course, the unity may not prove sustainable. It will get an immediate test as the Department of Justice investigates potentially classified documents found in the Washington office space of Biden’s former institute — which Republicans are likening to federal authorities probing of former President Donald Trump keeping hundreds of such records at his Florida club.
Tensions could also come from fellow Democrats on policy issues like immigration, police reform, raising the minimum wage, expanding voting rights and better protecting access to abortion — all areas where the party’s progressive wing would like to see Biden and the establishment do more.
Joseph Geevarghese, executive director of the progressive advocacy group Our Revolution, said grassroots activists and elected officials around the country understand the strategic value of the party holding firm during so many House speaker votes.
But he warned that it may not last.
“I don’t think this show of unity should create any illusion that progressives are going to pull their punches,” Geevarghese said. “There’s an old organizing adage, ’No permanent allies, no permanent enemies, only permanent interests.’”
Indeed, McCarthy alluded to how hard it will be for Democrats to stave off eventual dissent within their own ranks, joking, “Hakeem, I’ve got to warn you: Two years ago, I got 100% of the vote from my conference.” That recalled House Republicans uniformly opposing Democrat Nancy Pelosi as speaker in 2021, when doing so was easier than settling on someone to actually run the House.
Still, former New York Rep. Steve Israel, who was a top Pelosi adviser, predicted that additional divisions within the House GOP would make it easier for Democrats to find common ground.
“I expect that House Republicans will pursue a vitriolic agenda that pleases their own base and that will keep Democrats united for the next two years,” said Israel, who headed the House Democratic campaign arm from 2011 to 2015 and now directs the Cornell University Institute of Politics and Global Affairs.
That’s a far cry from early last year, when Democratic congressional disagreements derailed Build Back Better, an environmental and social spending proposal that was supposed to be the centerpiece of Biden’s domestic agenda.
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Read More: Unity is new tone for often-divided Democrats in Washington
