Photo Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast/Reuters
On his road to becoming House Democratic leader, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) has had a complicated—and sometimes tortured—relationship with the left.
In recent years, the Democrat has spearheaded efforts to protect his party’s incumbents from liberal primary challenges, clashed with progressives on issues like Israel-Palestine, and decried the “extreme left” for being “obsessed with talking trash about mainstream Democrats on Twitter.”
Progressives have long criticized Jeffries—with a Brooklyn district that is, in one place, about a mile as the crow flies from Wall Street—for his coziness with the financial industry.