Newsman: It’s not a new fight, the battle waged between progressives and moderates over the vision of the Democratic Party. But this time around, moderates are emboldened. After spending the past few years working in the background as progressives became a leading voice in the party, moderates came out swinging after Election Day losses. In reality, several elections across the country still hadn’t been decided when the blame game started.
House Democrats were stunned by their losses after weeks of forecasting had predicted a big win on Election Day. Whispers of leadership change swirled, and House lawmakers soon moved from privately bashing one another to a public airing of grievances on social media and in the media.
Moderates, who helped Democrats take the House in 2018 and saw their colleagues ousted in key districts this year, not only demanded changes within the party apparatus but loudly issued warnings that Democrats will lose power in the 2022 midterm elections should they not make changes. Progressives fiercely dismiss that notion.
“For any organization, any team to have been successful, you have to have unity,” said Rep. Cindy Axne, the only Democrat to win a federal race in Iowa so far this year, in an interview with the news media USA today. (One race is yet to be called). “The No. 1 thing is you all have to be focused on the mission, and the way that you’re going to go about getting there is having the same strategy to get there. When you don’t have that, unity is gone and it makes it a lot more difficult. So I do have concerns.” USA TODAY interviewed key Democratic lawmakers from different factions of the party about the path forward, what needs to change to win areas President Donald Trump turned red and the legislation that could muster support from both sides of the aisle.
However, The backbiting over incremental progress versus bold changes has taken new form. Democrats find themselves not only quarreling about the disappointing results of the election, but they already are butting heads on the path forward, leaving in the crossfire both the legislative agenda in the Biden administration and changes needed to make Democratic gains in the next election.
Intraparty disputes have become almost routine, often sprung from two important developments for Democrats in the past five years: Sen. Bernie Sanders’ popular presidential runs that inspired a new generation of progressive activists, and the arrival of new progressives, such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., after the 2018 midterms.
Moderates, many from swing districts or states, often focus on local issues that don’t always draw the spotlight and boast of working across the aisle to enact more incremental changes in larger policy. Progressives, on the other hand, have advocated more sweeping change, calling for Democrats to be bold on urgent issues affecting their constituents, such as climate change, access to health care and criminal justice reform.
But unlike past fights over the direction of the party, the next year marks a new moment for Democrats as they take control of the White House, forcing Biden to navigate through deeply rooted beliefs in both branches of the party.
Moderate Democrats who have seen their colleagues ousted by Republicans were quick to point fingers. They argued that Republican attacks linking members to socialism and the “defund the police” movement were a death knell, and they blamed some progressive members for loudly backing those ideas.
Just days after the election, Numbers of House Democrats expressed their concerns that Democrats needed to learn a lesson from the losses or democrats will be torn apart in 2022 midterm election – according to the inner party sources who spoke to the national news media.
In the days that followed, the argument moved to the pages of The New York Times, where Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a New York Democratic socialist, argued that poor outreach and digital campaigning sunk moderates in swing districts. In turn, Rep. Conor Lamb, a Pennsylvania moderate who fended off a Republican challenger, responded that unpopular progressive messaging, such as defunding the police and talk of socialism, lost Democrats seats and could lose the House majority in the future.
Moderates have similarly taken issue with assessments by progressives over the losses, notably after Ocasio-Cortez said some swing-district Democrats were “sitting ducks” because of poor voter outreach and digital campaigning.
Across the board, moderates stressed that the best path forward was helping Biden get a legislative agenda through Congress and compromising with Republicans. Many stressed the need for progressives to tone down their rhetoric and for swing-district Democrats to better connect with voters back home in hopes that GOP attacks aiming to tie them to far-left policy wouldn’t stick.
Progressives such as Jayapal and Rep. Mark Pocan, both of whom co-chair the progressive caucus, were more subdued about immediate changes in Democrats’ approach. Both said a deep dive into voter data would display more about what went wrong this cycle and what changes were needed, something the House Democrats’ campaign arm has already promised it would do.
But both agreed Trump is an outlier in politics that likely had a greater impact than polling could predict and his removal from the White House could change things significantly in the next cycle.
