From today, Friday the 6th of November, to the 3rd of January is fifty-eight days.
That’s a little over eight weeks. It sounds like a good stretch of time. It isn’t, and I want to tell you why.
On January third the new Congress gets sworn in. The members raise their right hands, and the House holds its vote for Speaker right there on the floor. Whoever wins that vote holds the gavel for two years. Whoever leads in the Senate holds the other half of the building. Those two people will decide more about the next two years than almost anyone else in Washington.
Here is the part most folks don’t know, and it matters a great deal. The real choosing happens before January, behind closed doors. Each party meets in its own private caucus and picks its leaders ahead of time. Last time around, House Democrats voted in the middle of November. Senate Democrats settled theirs in early December. As I write this, I haven’t seen this year’s dates announced, but if the pattern holds, the doors start closing in a couple of weeks.
So fifty-eight days is the outside edge of the window, not the middle of it. The Senate leader never even gets a floor vote. The members pick that person in a room, and that’s the end of it. If we want a say in who leads, we have to speak up now, while the choosing is still going on.
I chose my words in that title carefully. I didn’t say demand. I said make our case. Some folks will think that’s too soft. I don’t. A demand gets a door shut in your face. A case gets heard. And a case that’s well made, with good reasons laid out in order, is a hard thing for any honest person to wave away.
Making a case is how free people tell their government what to do. It isn’t begging. It’s what a citizen does when he stands up at a meeting, looks the folks at the front table in the eye, and lays out his reasons. He doesn’t shout. He doesn’t need to. The reasons carry the weight.
Now, why does it matter so much who leads? Because the leader decides what happens and what never happens. The leader decides which bills come to the floor and which ones sit in a drawer until they die. The leader decides which hearings get scheduled and which questions get asked. You can elect the best members in the country, and if the wrong hand holds the gavel, very little of what you voted for will ever see daylight.
Think about a work crew picking a foreman. The whole crew has a say, at least on paper. But if everybody keeps quiet, the job goes to whoever has been there longest. Nobody voted for that, exactly. It just happened by habit. And then the whole crew lives with that choice every single day, whether it was a good one or not.
That’s the real thing we’re up against. It isn’t some villain twirling his mustache. It’s habit. In those halls, the default is that whoever held the job keeps the job, and whoever is next in line moves up a step. The quiet way things have always been done fills any room the people leave empty.
So what should our case be about? I’ll tell you what I think. It shouldn’t be about a name. It should be about a standard. Names come and go. A standard is something you can hold anybody to, old or new, left or center. If we set the standard clearly, the right names will sort themselves out.
The first part of the standard is accountability on the calendar. Not someday, and not when the time is right. Before the vote, we were promised accountability. Whoever leads should be willing to say, in writing, what hearings and what investigations will begin in the first hundred days. If they can’t name a date, they haven’t made a plan. They’ve made a wish.
The second part is that they say it out loud and put it in writing. A leader who won’t commit on paper is keeping his options open. And when a man keeps his options open, it’s usually because somebody other than you is going to help him decide later. We deserve to know the plan before the gavel changes hands, not after.
The third part is who they answer to. Every leader takes meetings. Every leader raises money. That’s the world as it is, and I’m not naive about it. But we have a right to ask a leader to be open about who’s in the room. Who are you meeting with in these fifty-eight days? Who called you after the election? A leader with nothing to hide should have no trouble answering.
The fourth part is listening. The people who sent them there spoke clearly. A leader should be able to tell us, in his or her own words, what they heard from the voters. If all they can repeat back is what the consultants and the donors told them, then they weren’t listening to us at all.
The fifth part is the ability to move when the moment calls for it. Careful is good. Steady is good. But there is a difference between steady and stuck. Some moments come once, and if you don’t act, they’re gone. A leader has to know which kind of moment this is.
Now let me be fair, because a case that isn’t fair isn’t worth making. Experience counts for something. The old hands know the rules of that building better than any newcomer ever will. They know how to count votes and how to get a bill through. That knowledge is real, and throwing it away for no reason would be foolish.
But knowing the rules is not the same as knowing the people. A man can know every page of the rulebook and still forget who he works for. What we’re asking for is experience that listens. If an old hand can show us that, I’m glad to have him. If he can’t, then all those years are just a long habit with a good title on it.
I’ll be fair to the moderates too. Some of them talk about going slow because they’re worried about overreaching and losing the trust of folks in the middle. That’s a real worry. I don’t dismiss it. But careful and slow are not the same thing. You can be careful and still move. All we’re asking is that they tell us where they’re going and when they plan to get there.
I said at the start that I want this to reach thinkers, not just the folks who are already fired up. Here’s why. Anger burns hot and burns out fast. Leaders know that. They’ve watched crowds get loud and then go home. What they can’t wait out is a citizen with good reasons who keeps asking the same fair question until he gets a fair answer.
So here is the most important thing I’ll tell you today. We don’t vote for the party leaders. Our members do. Your own congressman and your own two senators are the ones in that caucus room casting a vote. They’re your lever. They’re the only door you have into that room. And they need to hear from you before they walk in, not after they walk out.
Write to them this week. Not in December, this week. Keep it short and keep it respectful. Tell them the standard you want any leader held to. Then ask them a simple, fair question: who will you vote for as leader, and why? Ask them to answer you in writing. You’d be surprised how much weight a respectful letter carries when it asks a direct question.
Keep a copy of what you send and whatever comes back. If nothing comes back, keep a note of that too. Silence is an answer. It tells you something about whether they think you’re worth hearing from. And two years from now, when they come asking for your vote again, that record will still be there.
Talk to your neighbors about this. Most people have no idea the leaders get picked in a back room weeks before anybody is sworn in. Tell them. Share this, or say it in your own words. If enough people understand how the choosing works, the choosing has to change. That’s how it has always gone in this country.
And if they don’t listen? Then we’ll know. That isn’t a threat. It’s just a fact. Every member who walks into that caucus room is walking in with a record. The primaries come around again. People remember who heard them and who didn’t. A leader chosen against the plain wishes of the people starts the job already in debt.
But I’d rather not get there. I’d rather they listen now. I believe most of the folks we sent to Washington want to do right. Some of them just need to hear, loud and clear and with good reasons attached, what doing right looks like to the people who sent them.
So here we are. Fifty-eight days on the outside, and maybe a lot fewer where it really counts. The clock started the day the votes were counted. It’s running right now, while you read this.
Make the case. Make it well. Make it fair. And make it now, while the door is still open. Because once that door closes, we live with what’s behind it for two long years.
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This post was drafted with AI governed assistance and reviewed and directed by Michael S. Faust Sr. before publication.
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