Midterms Gave Dems a Blue Wave. It Was Stopped by a Traffic Jam

Detailed summary

Hakeem Jeffries had the votes to take down Pete Hegseth. Unfortunately, he couldn’t get his own party to show up.

Democrats, already fretful as Hakeem Jeffries prepares to wield the Speaker’s Gavel in the House of Representatives, received little reassurance after he failed his latest leadership test. And it was a pretty easy test: His caucus just needed to wrangle the necessary votes to proceed with articles of impeachment against one Whiskey Pete Hegseth. But no, the bill fell 211-204. The only Republican who voted for the measure was the one who introduced it, Thomas Massie.

Of those, ten had previously expressed support for Hegseth’s removal, while one, Michigan’s Haley Stevens, apparently spent her time back on Capitol Hill hanging out in the Republican cloakroom with her hat. I don’t know what goes in that room, but I’m guessing the only cloaking being done was to hide Stevens’ shame.

Had the other ten (or even eight) Democrats voted in support, ol’ Pete would be facing a very public airing of his alleged high crimes and misdemeanors, not the least of which is, you know, murdering people on the open seas. And bombing a girls’ school—three times.

So what happened? Why did so many Dems miss their chance to hold a senior Trump official to account? Would you believe… traffic?

Because gridlock is the excuse given out by several missing members: New Mexico Congresswoman Melanie Stansbury complained that she got stuck behind “a police escort of a bus,” causing her to miss the vote by one minute. Three other Dems also blamed traffic for their absence although, somehow, the Republicans still managed to get enough of their people onto the floor before Speaker Mike Johnson gaveled the voting to a close. Are Republicans simply better at navigating Washington’s roadways?

Am I suggesting it’s Hakeem Jeffries’ fault that folks got caught in traffic? Yes. That’s exactly what I’m suggesting. Get your people to the church on time, as the saying goes. The current Speaker didn’t seem to have any trouble filling his pews–so why did Jeffries?

(In a piece from The Washington Sun which featured a…

Whil…

Opening of the article, excerpted from Daily Beast. To read the rest, open the article on the publisher's site.