Hakeem Jeffries gets the majority of his dreams

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) is set to preside over a commanding Democratic majority after his party swept districts President Trump carried by double digits. Why it matters: Democrats' landslide win will make it much, much easier for the likely next speaker to secure the gavel without a sweat and ignore the demands of his progressive wing. Rep. Greg Stanton (D-Ariz.), a leader of the center-left New Democrat Coalition, told Axios in an interview Tuesday night that Jeffries "now has the space to utilize his full talents as speaker." The size of Democrats' victory, Stanton said, "allows him to govern without worrying about being leveraged by anyone." Driving the news: Jeffries is on track to enjoy a majority of dozens of votes, with the New York Times projecting Democrats to win as many as 256 seats to Republicans' 178. Democrats flipped districts where the national parties didn't even spend money, likely unseating Republicans such as Reps. Lauren Boebert and Richard Hudson who were considered safe just months ago. It's a major partisan win for Democrats as a whole, but the party's centrist wing is also hailing the result as a much-needed strategic victory over the left. Zoom in: Progressives — particularly "The Bloc," a group made up of hard-charging leftists like Darializa Avila Chevalier and Adam Hamawy — had hoped to use a small majority to extract concessions from Jeffries. Many of them have declined to commit to supporting Jeffries as speaker and signaled they would use their votes as leverage force votes on progressive legislation such as Medicare-for-All, defunding ICE and cutting aid to Israel. But the left's strategy is "going to look different from what it would have been with a smaller margin," one incoming House progressive told Axios, noting that "leaders have more flexibility when they have big majorities." Progressives "can't really extract much now [with this] colossal majority," a progressive strategist acknowledged, adding that "w