I Got the Clock Wrong On 58

A few days ago I told you we had 58 days to make our case for new leadership.

I want to start today by telling you I got that wrong. Not the whole thing. But the part that mattered most.

Fifty-eight days was the count to January 3. That’s the day the new Congress is sworn in and the full House votes for speaker. I treated that date as the deadline. It isn’t. The real choosing happens a lot sooner than that.

So let me set the record straight. Then let me lay out what’s coming, and where you and I stand in it. If I’m going to ask you to check what you’re told, I’d better check what I tell you first.

Here’s what I found. House Democrats will hold their leadership elections on November 18 and 19. That comes from CBS and Axios, and the candidates’ own offices have said the same. That’s not 58 days from my post. That’s about ten days from today.

That vote is where the House decides who leads. It’s held behind closed doors, by secret ballot. Hakeem Jeffries is running for speaker. Katherine Clark is running for majority leader. Pete Aguilar is running for whip. Ted Lieu is in line for caucus chair.

Jeffries needs a simple majority of his own caucus that week. Then on January 3 he needs 218 votes on the House floor to take the gavel. But the floor vote is mostly a formality. The real decision is made in that closed room in November.

Now the Senate. Here my post had it right, and I’ll say so. Senate Democrats are expected to hold their leadership vote in early December. The Hill and Roll Call both report that. No exact day has been set yet.

That vote is also a secret ballot. Chuck Schumer needs a majority of his caucus to stay on as leader. That caucus will have somewhere between 54 and 56 members. And whoever wins becomes majority leader in January. The full Senate never votes on it. The caucus decides, and that’s the end of it.

There’s a fight brewing on that side. At least six newly elected Democratic senators promised during their campaigns to back removing Schumer. Senator Chris Van Hollen is calling for an open and honest debate about leadership. But so far, nobody has formally stepped up to run against him.

Here’s something a lot of folks don’t know. The new members get a vote in all of this. The ones you just elected on November 3 will be in those rooms. They vote on leadership before they’re ever sworn in.

That’s why the caucuses wait until after Election Day. The incoming class comes to Washington for orientation, and choosing party leaders is part of that business. The people you sent there get a say in who leads them, right out of the gate.

Some of you asked me a good question. Don’t they have to wait until every vote is counted and certified? The answer is no. And that surprised me too.

Results aren’t final until each state certifies them. But the caucuses don’t wait for that. As I write this, the Senate races in Alaska and Mississippi still haven’t been called, and dozens of House races are still being counted. The House will pick its leaders anyway.

If a race is disputed, that gets sorted out on January 3, at the swearing-in. The House is the judge of its own elections. A member-elect in a disputed seat can be asked to stand aside while the others take the oath. But the leadership choice won’t wait on any of it.

The Senate’s December date does leave room for its open races to settle. They’ve done that before. In 2022, Senate Democrats held off their vote until they knew how the Georgia runoff turned out. That may happen again this year.

So now let me tell you where you and I stand in all this. We don’t vote in those rooms. We had our vote on November 3. We picked the people who will be sitting there. That was our turn at the ballot.

But that doesn’t mean we’re done. It means our job changed. Before, we were voters. Now we’re the ones watching. And the window to be heard is short.

On the House side, you have about ten days. If you want your new member to know where you stand before that closed-door vote, now is the time to call. Not in December. Not in January. This week and next.

People are already doing it. Axios reports House Democrats and members-elect are getting flooded with calls and emails. Many of them are urging their member not to elect Jeffries. Most members still say they’ll vote for him. But they’re hearing from home, and that counts for something.

Now here’s the part I want you to think about. That vote is a secret ballot. When it’s over, you won’t be told how your member voted. Nobody outside that room will.

So if you want to know, you have to ask before the vote. Ask your member to tell you, in public and on the record, who they’ll support and why. A member willing to say it out loud is a member you can hold to it. A member who won’t say is telling you something too.

The same goes for the Senate. You have a little longer there, until early December. If you have a new senator, they’ll be in that room. Ask them where they stand. Ask them to say it in public. Then remember the answer.

That’s the whole point of what I write here. Somebody has to keep watch. Not to tear things down. Not to cheer things on. Just to make sure the people we hired do what they told us they’d do.

So here’s my correction, and my promise. I gave you the wrong clock. I’ve fixed it. And if I get something wrong again, you’ll hear it from me first, before you hear it from anybody else.

Check what I say. Check what the news says. Check what any machine tells you, too. A thing called confirmed isn’t proof until you’ve seen where it came from. I learned that again this week, the hard way.

The House picks its leaders November 18 and 19. The Senate picks in early December. The new Congress takes over January 3. Mark those dates. Make your calls. And keep watching.

The vote is over. The watching is just getting started.

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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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