House Democrats Decide to Delete All of Their Mean Tweets About Each Other

The dumbest episode in the House Democratic caucus so far this year has finally come to an end—for now.

After a highly-public fight between the Democratic leadership and the group of four Democratic freshmen known as the Squad, in which the official House Democratic caucus Twitter account (operated by the staff of caucus chairman Rep. Hakeem Jeffries) called out Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s chief of staff—and then, you know, everything else that happened after this—the leaders of all three major party caucuses have signed a truce. Really.

Jeffries, Congressional Progressive Caucus chairs Reps. Pramila Jayapal and Mark Pocan, Rep. Derek Kilmer of the moderate New Democrat Coalition, and Rep. Stephanie Murphy of the Blue Dog coalition all released a statement on Thursday night stressing that the Democrats are a “diverse, robust, and passionate family,” and that “every single voice within the House Democratic Caucus is an important one.”

“We have a shared mission. Onward and upward,” the statement ended. “Together, House Democrats will deliver For the People.”

Politico takes us Behind the Politics on how this all came to happen:

Jayapal — who one source described as “instrumental” to securing the detente — indicated to Jeffries that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and her allies were looking to move on from the controversy that engulfed the last several weeks. Another source said Jeffries was a key “peacemaker” in negotiating the terms of the agreement.

[…]

With Jayapal as the intermediary, it was communicated to Jeffries and others that Chakrabarti’s offending tweets would come down, according to sources with knowledge of the deal. Another part of the deal was that a tweet from the official House Democratic Caucus account — responding to Chakrabarti — would be deleted in addition to a tweet from CPC co-chair Rep. Mark Pocan of Wisconsin calling members of the Problem Solvers Caucus “child abusers.”

And so all of the tweets have since been deleted.

It’s worth remembering, though, that all of this—the Squad slamming the right-wing of the caucus, Pocan and Chakrabarti’s tweets, and everything going to hell afterwards—happened not because of some struggle for power, but because half of the Democratic caucus voted to pass Mitch McConnell’s border bill with virtually no strings attached. As numerous as the personality struggles are within the House Democratic caucus, those can be assuaged for a short time; the bigger issue is the thoroughly deep political divide that runs through the center of the caucus. This is the result of a caucus that includes virtually everything under the sun, between self-described democratic socialists and anti-choicers, war hawks, Wall Street allies, and people who think Israel has never done anything wrong. No thoroughly workshopped, joint press release can fix the problem that these people just don’t agree on some crucial things.

Whatever the case, we’ll see how long this Democratic unity holds after the House votes on a resolution to condemn free speech next week. Should be great.