Jeffries has the ability to flip that narrative and become his party’s de facto captain. Democrats have high hopes for regaining the House majority next year, but a more pressing question facing a rudderless political party is if Jeffries can become the “man of the moment” to steer them back to victory. 

With record-low approval ratings and a majority of voters within the party who say it’s heading in the wrong direction, Democrats’ next national leader will need not only to win elections but also rally the base to recapture historically blue voting blocs that trended toward Trump in 2024.

Many congressional Democrats say Jeffries is up to the task, a conversation that’s burst into the open amid severe blowback from the Left against Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) for his decisions under Trump 2.0. 

“I absolutely think he can be the man of the moment,” Rep. Julie Johnson (D-TX) said. “We have consistently held the line across the board, in large part due to his leadership.”

“[Jeffries] has been fantastic in rallying the caucus, and providing unified votes sort of maximizes our power,” said Rep. Glenn Ivey (D-MD), who called for Schumer to step down. “But the president has the bully pulpit, so it’s hard to compete with that.”

But those outside Washington, D.C., aren’t so sure. The skepticism is particularly present among the grassroots, who question Jeffries’s ability to deviate from scripted messages and present a show of force against Republicans.

“He could be standing up a lot more,” said New York state Sen. Jabari Brisport, a Democrat whose district overlaps with Jeffries in Brooklyn. “He was in the press asking what leverage we have and just caving immediately, really just weeks into the Trump presidency, which doesn’t bode well for the next four years.”

Barren leadership ranks are ripe for Jeffries to fill the void

Perhaps no better episode has underscored Democrats’ need for a national leader than that of the government shutdown saga against Republicans that cratered the party and frayed relations between Jeffries and Schumer, a longtime fixture in New York and national politics.

The two New Yorkers were pitted against one another over whether to help the GOP fund the government or risk a shutdown that Democrats would have no power to end. Schumer, opposing nearly all House Democrats and most in the Senate, retreated by delivering Republicans enough votes to break a filibuster. 

With Schumer’s future on thin ice as some congressional Democrats call for new Senate leadership, many in the party across the ideological spectrum are looking to Jeffries to carry the mantle. He enjoys an array of support from current and former House members and is seen as someone with the track record to unite centrists and progressives. 

“We have to think of our work not just as legislators or political leaders but as, hopefully, movement leaders,” said Sen. Andy Kim (D-NJ), a former House member. “Hakeem is better attuned to that understanding that we need to engage beyond just this building, beyond just the political space at this moment, and understanding how to cultivate those relationships.”

Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD), the former House majority leader on Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) leadership team, acknowledged that Democrats are leaderless, at least until there’s a presidential nominee. He lauded Jeffries and characterized him as playing a pivotal part in helping the party transition while countering Trump. 

“I think every one of us has that responsibility,” Hoyer said. “I think he has that responsibility as well.”

Comparing Jeffries to his predecessor, Pelosi, the former House speaker who frequently went toe-to-toe with Trump in his first term, is an impossible task, according to Democratic lawmakers and strategists. Jeffries has “giant high heels” to fill, California Democratic strategist and former Clinton administration official Steven Maviglio put it. 

“Nancy Pelosi was a powerhouse that took 20 years to get where she did, and he’s relatively a rookie,” Maviglio said. “That said, I think he needs to step out of her shadow.”

Pelosi and her leadership team stepped down in 2023 after Republicans took control of the House but remain as rank-and-file members. Pelosi, serving her 20th term, is still a driving force within the party. She is frequently communicating with Jeffries and is a strong mentor, according to lawmakers. But, in some ways, Pelosi is seen as a liability to Jeffries.

The former speaker caught fire from some of her Democratic colleagues, who saw her as having a critical role in pushing former President Joe Biden out of the 2024 presidential race. It put Pelosi at odds with members of the Congressional Black Caucus and other coalitions that encouraged their fellow Democrats to stick by Biden’s side.

In an hourlong sit-down with Jeffries earlier this month, Pelosi told him to “use your power” and show his strength during the bout of Democratic infighting over the shutdown dilemma.

“She sort of pledged to get out of the way, and put him in a kind of an awkward position because his caucus, and the black caucus, and several groups that he’d been part of were pro-Biden,” Maviglio said. “It was a funky, awkward position for him.”

Meanwhile, others are stealing the spotlight and trying to fill the leadership void as others in Jeffries’s own caucus seem to overshadow him at times.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), the former Democratic presidential candidate who caucuses with Democrats, and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) embarked on a recent “Fighting Oligarchy Tour” across several states that drew thousands of attendees per rally. Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX), a fiery sophomore lawmaker, has also been pushing a huge presence on social media calling on Democrats to push back hard against Trump and Elon Musk.

But Jeffries is unbothered by questions about whether he is the best leader for the House Democrats.

“I’ve had unanimous consent, what, 20 different times across two Congresses? Kind of speaks for itself,” Jeffries said recently, of how many times his caucus voted for him on the House floor during protracted GOP House speaker votes.

Jeffries’s growing pains: ‘It’s not enough to complain’

Jeffries is in uncharted waters at the helm of the Democratic caucus under a Republican administration. While he largely receives accolades from colleagues on the Hill, his tenure hasn’t been without early stumbles in Trump’s second term, and critics outside of the Washington bubble want him to double down on resisting a Republican agenda. 

A possible side effect of the frustration at the grassroots level with Democrats that’s been put on full display at contentious town halls is establishment members getting primaried from the left. Jeffries downplayed the possibility of it becoming a trend, even as longtime Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) is facing a challenge from 26-year-old progressive influencer Kat Abughazaleh, who says the party needs to “grow a f***ing spine.”

“There’s a lot of energy, a lot of angst, a lot of anxiety, of course, across the country as it relates to the parade of horribles that Donald Trump has been unleashing on the American people,” Jeffries recently told reporters. “Our focus is going to be [to] stop bad things from happening to the American people, and there will be a time and place where the politics take care of themselves.”

Jeffries did not respond to a request for comment for this story by print time. 

The minority leader embodies a far more scripted and cautious messaging approach, sometimes to the detriment of progressives yearning to fight tooth and nail against Trump’s overhaul of the federal government. His monotone responses and repetitive hand gestures can often appear robotic. 

“This is not the time for that,” Columbia University professor and political pundit Lincoln Mitchell said of Jeffries’s reserved nature. “Jeffries would lose nothing, and the Democratic Party would lose nothing, if he stood up and opposed everything Donald Trump is doing and was loud about it. He would be in a more popular position if he did that, and I don’t think he’s going to do that.”

Beyond his delivery is also the desire for Jeffries to show that Democrats have counter-policy proposals to Trump’s flurry of executive orders and a Trump-inspired policy bill working its way through Congress centered on energy, taxes, the border, and national security. 

“I would like to see him not only talk about what Republicans are doing, but what the vision should be,” Brisport said. “It’s not enough to complain about Republicans stripping away healthcare and then also not support universal healthcare.”

Brisport pointed to Sanders and his more populist, animated, and anti-corruption messaging that has long energized the base when others can’t.

Democratic leaders like Jeffries and Schumer are “caving,” in part, by “cozying up with billionaires” on the campaign trail instead of focusing more on policies that resonate with the average American, Brisport said. 

“You don’t just need better messaging if your actual policy is milquetoast,” he added. “You need to actually have strong working-class policies as well.”

Jeffries has held press conferences nearly every week since Trump retook the White House that rehash old talking points on protecting Medicaid or Social Security. He’s largely refrained from addressing the news of the day unless prompted by reporters. 

The most recent case came last week, when Jeffries recycled past remarks on the GOP’s proposed Medicaid cuts rather than pivoting to the timely bombshell revelations that Trump administration officials planned sensitive military strikes against Houthis in Yemen in a group chat that accidentally included a journalist. 

Jeffries only addressed the issue after it was brought up by a reporter and called for a congressional investigation. Rank-and-file House Democrats later held their own press conference on the group chat leaks published by the Atlantic. Jeffries later called for the firing of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who texted the sensitive information about the strikes.

Comedian Jon Stewart, an idol to progressives for his willingness to put establishment Democrats like Jeffries and Schumer on blast, sought to drive home the point to Jeffries in a recent appearance on Stewart’s podcast that Democrats’ issues extend beyond a messaging problem to a policy problem. 

DEMOCRATS WEIGH CHANGE IN STRATEGY TO AVOID MIDTERM AND 2028 DEFEATS

“Where is the Democrats’ Project 2025? Is that underway?” Stewart asked Jeffries. “Everything you’re saying feels right to me. … Where’s the infrastructure to do that?”

“In terms of how we better communicate with the American people, Maya Angelou said it best — ‘People won’t remember what you say, they may not even remember what you do, but they will always remember how you make them feel,’” Jeffries responded on the podcast. “And I think, what we have to do a better job of, is making the American people feel that we understand the pain.”