Yes, he won the House speakership, after 1.5 attempts. But he still doesn’t control his chamber.
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson delivers remarks after being reelected speaker on the first day of the 119th Congress. (Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images)
“You can start cutting off my fingers. I am not voting for Mike Johnson tomorrow,” Representative Thomas Massie told disgraced former representative Matt Gaetz, the brand-new anchor at wing-nut One America News Thursday night. The Kentucky conservative’s bloody imagery foreshadowed the ritualistic torture Johnson’s skeptics hoped to inflict before giving him back the speaker’s gavel. The dozen or so possible holdouts, who didn’t take as strong an opposition line as Massie but didn’t pledge their support either, seemed to want to symbolically snip off one or two of Johnson’s fingers before pledging their support. They demanded deals Johnson said he wouldn’t make.
In fact, Johnson came into the meeting Friday saying he was confident he’d win on the first vote, losing only the implacable Massie, who voted for Tom Emmer as promised—the only vote he could afford to lose. The former (at that point) speaker was wrong, by my count. He lost two more: South Carolinian Representative Ralph Norman, who voted for Ohio extremist Representative Jim Jordan, and Texas Representative Ralph Self, who voted for Florida Representative Byron Donalds. Six Freedom Caucus members declined to vote when called; all voted for Johnson when called at the end.
As in every other speaker vote, all Democrats voted for minority leader Hakeem Jeffries.
But ultimately, it didn’t matter. Johnson was smart enough not to gavel the session closed and went off to cajole and arm-twist Norman and Self. At one point, he left the chamber hanging his head, then remembered the cameras and looked up and waved. Good optics.
We still don’t know how Johnson got those two to change sides. Probably by making promises he can’t keep. Officially, the House proceeded to vote open voting again, Norman and Self changed their votes, and Johnson’s opponents didn’t get the chance to cut off a figurative finger or two.
That we know of.
People are calling it a first-vote victory. I’d say he won on vote 1.5.
Sometimes-smart MSNBC contributor Brendan Buck, who worked with doomed former GOP speakers John Boehner and Paul Ryan, insisted that merely losing three votes, then getting two back, was good news for Johnson. Maybe. But I don’t think there’s any good news for Johnson beyond today.
Certainly Johnson benefited from the fact that no Republicans ran against him, and President-elect Donald Trump enthusiastically supported him. But Trump also set up some of Johnson’s once and future suffering by pulling three members out of the GOP caucus to serve in his cabinet. The embattled speaker will continue to have to rely on Democrats to pass legislation. Which makes it more likely that, despite Friday’s victory, Johnson won’t survive his term.
Still, we should call this Trump’s first victory of his co-presidency with Elon Musk. We know Musk helped strike down the bipartisan continuing resolution to keep the government open last year, before Trump weighed in with his own reservations.
Then, Musk launched a war on Trump’s top MAGA buddies over the H-1B visa, which lets in talented noncitizens, arguing that it is a boon to American capitalism. Trump eventually sided with Musk over longer-term allies like Steve Bannon and Laura Loomer. Musk went over the top, telling MAGA critics: “Take a big step back and FUCK YOURSELF in the face,” he said to an X user who opined that H-1Bs shouldn’t exist. “I will go to war on this issue the likes of which you cannot possibly comprehend.”
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And only a few days ago, after Trump full-throatedly endorsed Johnson, and Kentucky’s Massie aired his complaints, Musk slightly undercut Trump by tweeting to Massie, “You might be right but let’s see how it goes.”
Massie lost this battle, but could still win the MAGA war.
For Democrats, one dramatic moment came when delegate Stacey Plankett from the Virgin Islands, who has no voting rights in the body, railed against the injustice of representatives from territories and colonies having only symbolic input into big decisions—as they can sit in the chamber, but not decide its future. Democrats rose to applaud her, but she was ruled out of order. If Democrats would do more than applaud Plankett, and work on statehood for at least Puerto Rico and Washington, DC, along with more equitable status for others, our political reality could be different.
Instead, minority leader Hakeem Jeffries pledged to “put down our swords and pick up our ploughshares…in order to make life better for everyday Americans.” It was a disturbing moment, to me. “America is too expensive. There are too many Americans living paycheck to paycheck,” he said. Why is Jeffries gaslighting us as though both parties oppose solutions to economic inequality? It’s only the Republicans.
Yes, he pledged to defend Social Security and Medicare against unnamed opponents. He delivered several other barbs. But we’ve seen this movie before. He didn’t name the GOP; he addressed the “opposition.” He slightly redeemed himself by mocking those who pretend Joe Biden lost in 2020 and noted that Democrats are the people who accept elections both when they win and when they lose.
There’s so much turmoil within the MAGA “movement,” it’s the only thing that makes politics bearable right now. But we can’t change the country with schadenfreude. And maybe we can’t change the country with the Democratic leadership we have now. I hope I’m wrong.
Joan WalshTwitterJoan Walsh, a national affairs correspondent for The Nation, is a coproducer of The Sit-In: Harry Belafonte Hosts The Tonight Show and the author of What’s the Matter With White People? Finding Our Way in the Next America. Her new book (with Nick Hanauer and Donald Cohen) is Corporate Bullsh*t: Exposing the Lies and Half-Truths That Protect Profit, Power and Wealth In America.