By Dr. Rod Berger
I'm Dr. Rod Berger. On Help Me Understand, you bring the question to The People's Hotline, and I go find where we've seen it before.
The week of the election, I asked what you want most from the people who won. You split down the middle. Forty-four percent of you said keep the promises they ran on. Another 44 percent said hold the other side accountable. Twelve percent said lower the temperature and govern. That split is this whole newsletter.
Here's this week's question. Next week I'll share how HMU readers answered.
Two days after the election, a listener left a message on our hotline for the new Democratic leaders.
“And I just would like to have a message for Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries. We don't want Kumbaya. We want revenge. Justice. Accountability. We want to make real change in the direction that this country's coming in. We don't want to go back to being the nice guys that play by the rules.”
A caller to The People's Hotline, troubled, on revenge and accountability
The morning after the election, Hakeem Jeffries, the man expected to become Speaker of the House, said the opposite on MS NOW's Morning Joe.
“The American people don't want us to get even. They want us to get things done on their behalf.”
Hakeem Jeffries, on MS NOW, November 4, 2026
Same side. Same week. Opposite standards. So help me understand this. When your side finally holds the gavel, which standard do you want it to keep?
Two words on election night
Here's what the new majority has done since the polls closed. As results came in, Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, posted a message for the people who work in the White House. Two words: lawyer up.
Two days later, a Democratic senator, Peter Welch of Vermont, told the Associated Press the opposite: “We can't turn this into just a vengeance tour.” Before anyone has been sworn in, the majority already runs on two standards.
The strongest case for Garcia is a strong one. Oversight isn't revenge. It's part of Congress's job, and investigating how the executive branch spends your money and uses its power is exactly what an Oversight chair is for.
But the test from Tuesday's episode still works. Swap the name. Picture the other party winning the House, and its new Oversight chair telling your side's staff to lawyer up before a single hearing. Would you call that accountability? If your answer changes with the name, you haven't found a standard. You've found a team.
The rule from April 2024
On Sunday, November 8, Jeffries went on ABC's This Week and talked about the resolution to impeach the Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth.
“I'm a hard yes on the Hegseth resolution.”
Hakeem Jeffries, on ABC's This Week, November 8, 2026
We've seen this question before, and recently. In April 2024, Senate Democrats threw out the House impeachment of Alejandro Mayorkas, the Homeland Security secretary. Chuck Schumer gave the reason:
“We felt very strongly that we had to set a precedent that impeachment should never be used to settle policy disagreements.”
Chuck Schumer, April 17, 2024
That's the rule his own party wrote two and a half years ago. The question now is whether it still applies.
There's a real answer, and it deserves its say. Jeffries isn't arguing policy. He told ABC that Hegseth abused his power and engineered what he called a reckless and costly war of choice in Iran. And this push didn't start with Democrats. The resolution comes from a Republican, Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, and its eight articles include a charge that Hegseth violated the War Powers Resolution. If the charge is abuse of power, it isn't a policy disagreement.
So the test cuts both ways. If you cheered Schumer's rule in 2024, you owe it a hearing now. If you mocked it then, you don't get to borrow it now.
The promise you can check
In the same interview, Jeffries promised to ban members of Congress from trading stock as soon as Democrats are back in control. Good. Write that one down, because you can check it.
In July, the House passed a Republican bill, 232 to 198, that stopped members, their spouses and their kids from buying new stock. Most Democrats voted no, and their reasons were real. It let lawmakers keep the stock they already owned. It didn't reach the president or the vice president. And it carried a photo ID requirement for voting that had nothing to do with stocks.
Fine. Then the test is simple. When their own bill comes, does it cover what members already own? Does it reach the White House?
At home, you'd never let the person who keeps the family books trade on what they know. You wouldn't accept “I'll stop next year.” You'd ask what they're holding right now.
Both in one breath
The night after the election, another listener called in happy. Listen to the middle of his message.
“Now I'm just hoping that Democrats will live up to their part.”
A caller to The People's Hotline, the night after the election
In his very next breath, he said he was looking forward to seeing the faces of the people on their way out in January. A hope that his side keeps its word, and a little appetite for the other side's faces, a few seconds apart.
I'd call that a person, not a hypocrite. Most of us carry both, and most of us never hear ourselves do it. What I'd ask him is what I'd ask anyone who waited two years for this week. Which one do you want more?
What the room is asking for
Three tests in one week. The new majority hasn't failed one yet, and it hasn't passed one either. So far they're promises. The votes haven't happened.
What our room wants is clearer. Of the 3,343 calls we've been able to read since the line opened in June, 454 were about Social Security, Medicare, health care, the courts or the economy. That's about one in seven. Nearly half of those, 48 percent, came in troubled, against 30 percent across the whole line.
The revenge calls are the loud ones. The worried ones ask something quieter. Who's going to take care of me?
The frame I have to watch
On Tuesday, I asked you to swap the name. That was easier to ask when the name belonged to the president. This one points at the side most of you voted for, and I'd rather not have to write it. That's exactly why I have to.
Some of you called this line last week asking for revenge, and you called it justice. Some of it may be. But the caller at the top of this newsletter said it plainly. She doesn't want to go back to being the nice guys who play by the rules. Sit with whether you'd accept that sentence from the other side.
When your side wins, what's the first rule you'd want to drop?
Who in your own house gets held to the rules, and who gets to be the exception?
If the new majority does to the other side exactly what was done to yours, what will you call it?
If your side stops playing by the rules, what exactly were you defending? Tell me in the comments.
A note on limits: The People's Hotline is a voicemail line that opened in June. A filter blocks more than a quarter of the calls before anyone reads them, and probably the angriest first. The topic tags come from the hotline software, and we check them by hand where it matters. Our reader poll counts whoever chose to answer. None of it is the country.
Meet your host
I’ve written for Forbes and Entrepreneur, and I serve as Editor-at-Large at Fair Observer. For nearly two decades, I was a guest lecturer on Storytelling in Business at Vanderbilt’s Owen Graduate School of Management. You’ll find more of my work at drrodberger.com.
Here, my job is narrower. The callers can take a side. I don't. I go looking for where we've seen this before, and I bring back the strongest case each side can make.
Help Me Understand, the podcast
Help Me Understand is my podcast on The Dangerous Ones Network. Each episode takes the stories from the news that make no sense to an ordinary person and asks the question we should be asking and aren't.
Latest episode: Who Plays by the Rules Now. The new majority's first week: a lawyer-up post, an impeachment vote and a promise on stock trading you can check.
Recent episodes: The Standard at Home, Not Their Money, Their Power with Marshall Herskovitz, Who Stayed Home, The Weeks In Between, and The Three-Point Plan with Marshall Herskovitz.
The book
Most of us live inside stories we never chose. Someone handed them to us, and we kept telling them.
The Narrative Edge: Authentic Storytelling That Meets the Moment (Wiley) is my book about learning to see those stories: how a story gets built, whose interests it serves, and what it asks you to do. Help Me Understand brings the same habit to the news.
Watch or listen: Who Plays by the Rules Now
Help Me Understand with Dr. Rod Berger, on The Dangerous Ones Network. Have something you're trying to understand? Call The People's Hotline and leave a message: 503-212-4600.
I want both justice and peace. Another thing is I want religion out of politics along with Israel and uber rich in politics! We must draw a line in the sand immediately!
This is not about "following the rules" that are arbitrary and favor a few.
I want the rule of law and equality under the law restored. I want actions and injustices that were enabled by corrupt processes reversed and people who were harmed made whole. I want ongoing corrupt practices stopped. Ds won big because enough people finally realized that Rs were actively hurting them and the hurt got bad enough that it broke through and motivated people to switch or get off the couch and go vote.
Rs are going to position everything that Ds do as retribution or revenge. When people know that they have done wrong, have been caught, know they are going to be held accountable for the wrongs they have done, they are going to fight it tooth and nail. The first and most obvious defense to being held accountable is to accuse the people imposing accountability of "breaking the rules" or "enacting revenge". Attempting to equate the two positions is normalizing evasion of consequences with imposing accountability under rule of law.
People are expecting the new Congress to actually do something even though trump can still use a veto. The new Congress should do things that help the public, reverse wrongs that have been done, impose accountability on those who have done wrongs, and stop further wrongs from continuing. In order to do this in the face of opposition that will stop at nothing to avoid consequences, the new Congress is going to have to effectively and continuously communicate to the public what it plans to do and what it is actually doing. By effective I mean some of the best communicators in the country even if not in office. People like AOC, Warren, the Obamas, Buttigieg, Sanders come to mind. It's time for Congress to establish its own coherent and unified "bully pulpit" as a coequal branch of government not the media soundbites of 435 Representatives and 100 Senators trying to get reelected.
The communication should clearly state what the new Congress is trying to do and very clearly state who is opposing the effort and who is supporting the effort. The new Congress needs to enlist the aid of hundreds of millions of people to start putting pressure on those who support continuing to extract the wealth of this country for their own benefit. It is long past time for the public to know who is trying to harm them and who is trying to help them.
Voters: If Congress will not do this, vote out those who won't do this repeatedly and continuously until they get the message. This government is supposed to work for us. It's long past time for those elected by us to realize that and act like it.
Some good things to do:
1) Pass universal healthcare and increase taxes on the wealthy by raising the top brackets and corporate brackets to pay for it. It’s disgusting that the U.S. is the only nation out of the top 33 without universal healthcare.
2) Increase the minimum wage to match where it should be if it had been inflation adjusted.
3) Solve the social security problem. There are multiple things that can be done and top on the list of things that can be done is eliminating the wage cap on social security taxes.
4) Get the epstein files released completely. Impeach the AG and continue to impeach any acting AG appointed afterwards until those files are released completely. The law is passed. Not releasing the files is blatantly illegal. This would be better than impeaching trump. The country should know what trump has done, indict him if crimes have been committed, try him in a court of law, and if found guilty, impose appropriate punishment.
5) Defund the Iran war and impeach hegseth. Until a Secretary of Defense starts bringing back the top commanders and JAGs, impeach any acting Secretary. Let the competent military people who have been purged figure out how to get us out of this mess, advise Congress and Congress should require the Executive Branch to take appropriate action to end an illegal war.
6) Refuse to confirm any further trump appointments of any kind.
7) Impeach Roberts, Alito and Thomas and pass legislation to expand SCOTUS.
8 Claw back all of the monies stolen from the Treasury by illegal and corrupt actions with interest and penalties.
9) Remove all of the tariffs imposed by trump under the guise of an emergency.
10) Restart support for Ukraine. They are the wall stopping Russia.
There are more but that’s my top 10.