Hey, Dems: Steal This Page from the GOP Playbook
The fight over health care doesn’t stop when big legislation passes—a lesson Democrats should know better than anybody.
THE SPEECH HAKEEM JEFFRIES GAVE in opposition to Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” two weeks ago didn’t get a ton of attention. And it’s easy to understand why.
By that point in the debate, Republican leaders had rounded up the votes they needed, making the bill’s passage a fait accompli. So while the House Democratic leader’s eight hour, forty-five minute soliloquy set a new record for the longest floor remarks in the chamber’s history, it was a show for the cameras with no effect on the outcome.
Still, the monologue reminded me of another speech on the House floor that took place under similar circumstances. And that one turned out to be a lot more important than anybody realized at the time.
It was late evening on March 21, 2010, less than an hour before House Democrats would pass the Affordable Care Act. Before the voting took place, House Republican leader John Boehner had his say. And while the veteran Ohio congressman didn’t try to set any records for speaking time—his remarks lasted just over ten minutes—he put his emotions into it, issuing a jeremiad against the Democrats and their bill and repeatedly shouting “Hell no!” His GOP colleagues roared in approval.
Boehner, like Jeffries, was not going to stop the bill. It was another strictly performative speech. And in the moment, it felt like a mere footnote to what was widely understood to be a historic night, one in which Democrats would achieve a major milestone in their century-long quest for universal coverage.
But Boehner was signaling that Republicans were not done—that they did not see the evening’s vote as the final word on the legislation.
It proved prophetic.
And in what came next, there’s a lesson for today’s Democrats figuring out what to do now.