You all know me, when the occasion is right, I’m fond of using the phrase, There’s a new Sheriff in town. It’s simple, it’s elegant, and it quickly gets the point across, things, they are a-changin’. And you can either adapt, or get run over. And as Rachel Maddow displayed tonight, when it comes to the United States congress, there really is a new Sheriff in town, and it’s the Democratic Progressive Caucus.
In one of her later segments tonight, Rachel had on one of my favorite guests, Ezra Levin. Levin is a former Democratic congressional staffer who, after the stunning Democratic loss in 2016, became the co founder of the group Indivisible. This is a group of former Democratic staffers that got together, looked at the amazing success of the Tea Party movement of 2010, and adapted it for Democrats to use against the GOP. Indivisible was widely credited for helping to fuel the incredible grassroots movement that led to the spectacular Democratic success in the 2018 midterms.
Maddow had Levin on to discuss the recently passed $1.9 trillion Covid relief bill. Levin said that the chair of the Democratic Progressive Caucus, WA representative Pramila Jayapal, had started consolidating power as early as late last year. She negotiated an agreement with Speaker Nancy Pelosi that allowed the Progressive Caucus to whip votes, an important tool to use to hold a caucus together on critical issues.
And she used it brilliantly. Incoming President Biden made the far left progressive $1.9 trillion Covid relief package as his first and highest priority. In the House, during the creation of the bill, more moderate Democratic members looked for ways to dilute both the cost as well as the benefits of the bill. With a unified caucus, Jayapal and the progressive Democrats forced the most progressive bill that could possibly pass the Senate. And it passed.
And the bill went on to the Senate. And almost immediately, more moderate Democrats like Joe Manchin, Jon Tester, and Krysten Sinema started look at ways to pare down the bill. And they did nibble around the edges. Nowhere near the damage they wanted to do, but then they ran up against a roadblock.
This bill was a must pass bill on the Biden agenda, and the sooner the better, no later than March 14th. The moderate Senate Democrats wanted to water the bill down more before sending it back to the House, but were already getting warning signals that if they didn’t like the final product, the House Progressive Caucus would sink the bill on the spot. Based with that prospect, the Senate Democrats swallowed the pill, and sent back a bill that the House could pass.
This is critical. Because the House Progressive Caucus is beginning to assume more and more control over the legislative process. Biden is going to soon put out a massive infrastructure bill, and the House Progressive caucus is going to play it to the bone, since it can be passed through reconciliation, without GOP support. And heading into the 2022 primaries, it is going to be another must pass piece of legislation on Biden’s agenda. Watch for the progressive caucus to make the bill as progressive as possible, and then dare the more moderate Senate Democrats to test their patience.
President Biden is a lifelong union man. He understands that there is strength in numbers, and even more in the unity of those numbers. And right now, the House Progressive Caucus is quickly accumulating the kind of power that is going to make them a major player, especially since the popularity of the Covid relief bill that they engineered will put wind in their sails. It’s starting to look like the days of wishy-washy, watered down progressive bills is over with. One can only hope.
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I couldn’t help but think of a verse from a Bob Dylan Classic:
Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don’t stand in the doorway
Don’t block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
The battle outside ragin’
Will soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin’
For Republicans, an earlier verse in that classic Dylan tune applies:
Come gather around, people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters around you have grown
And accept it that soon, you’ll be drenched to the bone
Is your time to you worth saving?
Well, you better start swimming
Or sink like a stone
For the times, they are a-changin’.
Sorry…I had to come back and pitch in some culture from my generation that conveys the GOP’s position today, with a small tweak for poetic license.
They’re gonna clean up your looks
With all the lies in the books
To make a citizen out of you
Because they sleep with a gun
And keep an eye on you, son
So they can watch all the things you do
Because the drugs never work
They’re gonna give you a smirk
‘Cause they got methods of stopping your vote
They’re gonna rip up your rights
And they’ll ignore all your plights
They disenfranchise and then they go gloat
Because…….
“Teenagers scare the livin’ shit out of me”
They could care less as long as someone’ll bleed
So darken your clothes, or strike a violent pose
Maybe they’ll leave you alone, but not me
I’ve always loved Rep Jayapal, and she doesn’t get quite the attention that maybe she should (and in today’s media environment, is that a bad thing?)
I wonder if she’d be a contender for Speaker if and when Speaker Pelosi steps down.
Not a bad thing at all, Rory. As the old god Hades proves, true power lies in invisibility.
She gets lots of attention in her home state. I don’t live in her district–she represents Seattle, I’m in Tacoma– but she’s highly respected throughout our state. At least west of the Cascades.
Schiff should be the most likely person to succeed Pelosi, if he remains in the House. Katie Porter is the top contender for Speaker of the future.
The Squad are the real engineers on the Progressive Train…let it keep on rollin’.
I just hope the “Progressive Democrats” ignore ONE key point that led the TEA Party to its success: Ignoring internal opposition.
The GOP has had a pretty consistent record over the past 40 years of, first ignoring, then pushing out anyone who wasn’t “pure” enough for the Party’s most extreme members. During the primaries, the “party faithful”–typically, the most conservative (to the point of reactionary absolutism)–kept voting for the candidate who could “out-conservative” the other candidates and, by the time of the general election, you ended up with right-wing, then far-right-wing, then right-wing nut job candidates because they had the (“R”) beside their name on the ballot and the less strident Republicans had largely quit paying attention to the platforms and policies and just looked for that “R” (a chilling reversal of the old “look for the union label” motto).
Democrats, on the other hand, have typically been destroyed when they pull that “purity” card. If the winner of the primary isn’t seen as sufficiently left/liberal/progressive enough, Democrats will “vote their conscience” rather than coalesce around their party’s candidate to stop the GOPer. It’s fine and dandy to do that if you live in a county/district/state where the Democrats have little-to-no chance of winning the contests in question (whether gerrymandering makes any difference or not) but if you live in a state where there’s a near permanent three-to-five percent swing vote, you can’t afford to be a purity snob–you NEED to support your party. That’s one reason I don’t really put that much stock in AOC since she represents a district that hasn’t seen a GOPer in decades (with the redistricting in New York, it’s a bit hard to really determine–the 14th district hasn’t had a GOPer since 1992 but the representative who won the seat in 1992 was redistricted to the 12th and Joe Crowley who’d held the seat before AOC was redistricted from the 7th after 2010). But someone like AOC is NEVER going to win a House seat from southern Alabama or southern Georgia or the Texas Panhandle or pretty much anywhere in West Virginia, even if an AOC-type wins the Democratic primary for that district. And it makes NO sense for an AOC-type to criticize a fellow Democrat who’s not as progressive or may even be “conservative” and then complain when said Democrat gets their ass handed to them because the general electorate won’t support the “progressive” or “liberal” or (shudder) “Socialist” platforms and policies. And threatening to primary such candidates for failing to fall in line is just as absurd. If “all politics is local,” then let the progressives put their money where their mouths are and support those moderate/conservative Democrats in the elections where they might have a chance to win/retain the seat against a GOPer over a “progressive” who will have almost zero chance of winning that seat.
As a progressive, I hear the strategy and risk analysis in your comment and agree with it. I think the solution lies in pursuing a Warren style strategy over a Sanders style strategy, and here’s what I mean.
Bernie wants to win, invite progressives to the table, then pass what they prescribe for the nation. His view is “here are ten things we want to do, this is how we are doing them, and healthcare goes first. Don’t like it? You can’t have a seat at the table.”
Warren, on the other hand, is more inclusive. She want to invite everyone to the table, lay out ten ideas, choose the three that are the most popular, then implement them in a manner that there’s a consensus for. With the less popular ideas, she’s willing to go back to building support and making her case.
I think the inclusivity, open-mindedness and tolerance that Warren always makes sure to convey are a means to makimg progressive gains without scaring off portions of the electorate. I mean…there are elements of her platform that moderates and centrists would fight tooth and nail to stop, lol, but there are portions that are massively popular that they’d be on board for.
Likewise with AOC vs Jayapal. AOC is always going to get more followers and more people to show up at marches, but Jayapal is goimg to get more done. It’s time for the rise of what I call the “rational progressives” over the “radical progressives.”
We have some smart and good people on our team. I have faith they will do the best they can. Everything progressives want is good for our country and the world.