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Will The Progressive Caucus Dominate The Democratic Party?

Will The Progressive Caucus Dominate The Democratic Party?

Reprinted with permission from The American Prospect.

Are the Democrats, as so many people believe, moving left, or are they gravitating to the center? Actually, the results of this year’s primary and general elections show there is movement in both directions, setting the party up for future conflicts.

Let’s look at the congressional results. Perry Bacon, Jr. at FiveThirtyEight  makes the case that the Democrats are moving left by comparing their House membership in 2010, the last time they controlled the chamber, to their incoming membership. Eight years ago, the Progressive Caucus had 80 members, while the Blue Dog Coalition, the most conservative Democrats, had 54. But in 2019, according to Bacon, the Progressive Caucus will rise to 96, while the Blue Dogs will number only 24. By that measure, the House Democrats have moved sharply to the left.

The picture looks different, however, if we compare the Progressive Caucus with the centrist New Democrat Coalition in the House and focus specifically on the new members who won districts previously held by Republicans. Democrats flipped 42 seats while losing two, for a net pickup of 40 (with one further addition possible in North Carolina).

So far, by my count, 24 of the new members who flipped seats have joined the New Democrats, while only 11 have joined the Progressive Caucus (including four who joined both groups). Altogether, with 89 members, the New Democrats will be only slightly smaller than the Progressive Caucus.

Competing forces are at work. The Democrats who flipped seats did so mostly in suburban districts where they attracted votes from independents and Republican moderates in what was an exceptionally strong year for Democrats. Many of the successful candidates were recruited to run precisely because they would appeal to moderates. That more of them joined the New Democrats than the Progressive Caucus should not be surprising.

At the same time, in urban districts that have previously been Democratic, generational turnover and ethnic succession are leading to a shift toward the left. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes’s upset of Joe Crowley in New York City is the paradigmatic case.

But the huge publicity given Ocasio-Cortes has obscured what are really two distinct developments: While progressives have gained ground in long-held Democratic areas, more centrist candidates have won the more competitive districts. This second development will limit how far to the left the party can go. The more the party expands into the suburbs, the more dependent it will be on those relatively centrist votes—and that dependence will become a constraint on the policies that Democrats are able to agree on.

Now let’s turn to the states, where Democrats picked up seven governorships in 2018: Michigan (Gretchen Whitmer), Illinois (J.B. Pritzker), Wisconsin (Tony Evers), Maine (Janet Mills), Kansas (Laura Kelly), Nevada (Steve Sisolak), and New Mexico (Michelle Luhan Grisham). Several of these new Democratic governors (notably Whitmer, Mills, and Sisolak) defeated candidates to their left in the primaries; all of them seem to me best described as center-left rather than progressive (in the left sense of that term).

To these new Democratic governors, we can add the two elected in 2017: Phil Murphy of New Jersey and Ralph Northam of Virginia, both of whom defeated primary opponents to their left before winning the general election.

The big gubernatorial wins for progressives in Democratic primaries in 2018 came in Florida (Andrew Gillum), Georgia (Stacey Abrams), Maryland (Ben Jealous), and Ohio (Richard Cordray). Although all four were ultimately defeated, Gillum and Abrams probably were stronger candidates—certainly they were more inspiring—than their more centrist primary opponents, and if not for Republican voter suppression in Georgia and Florida, they might have gone on to win.

But here’s the bottom line. Where Democrats made gains in the House and governorships, nearly all of the candidates were center-left rather than progressive. Somehow this striking pattern has been lost in all the talk about the party moving left.

Despite the growing strength of progressives in the party’s old strongholds, several forces are pulling Democrats to the center. The first is obvious. As the Republicans have moved to the far right, they have opened up ground in the center and created opportunities for Democratic gains. What Donald Trump has done nationally to alienate moderates, far-right Republican governors in Kansas, Maine, and elsewhere have done in their states.

Second, the Republicans’ shift to the right has led to an infusion of financial contributions to Democrats from centrist or even center-right donors. Michael Bloomberg, who gave Democratic candidates $100 million in 2018, is only the best known. Writing at The Intercept, Lee Fang points to a series of major Republican donors switching to Democrats this year and notes correctly, “Though national media attention has focused largely on newly elected democratic socialists and progressive members, the House Democratic caucus has also swelled with pro-business moderates.”

A third factor contributing to centrist gains is the widespread sense of high danger to the country posed by Trump and the Republicans today. Democratic primary voters are so concerned to pick candidates who can win that they may be treating candidates’ policies as secondary to their electability. Where Democrats hold relatively safe seats, Democratic primary voters may feel free to vote their ideological preferences, but they may think about those choices differently in competitive districts and states.

In other words, the same voter might vote for a centrist in a competitive district and a progressive in a safe district. The first vote might help secure a Democratic majority, while the second might push that majority toward more progressive policies.

These considerations, it seems to me, could become important in next year’s Democratic primaries. Democratic voters may be less concerned about which candidate’s views most closely match their own than about which one can defeat Trump (assuming Trump runs again). So they may value a candidate’s ability to attract moderates even if their own views are progressive.

That kind of calculation may help explain a striking result in a Gallup poll conducted November 13-18 that asked Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents whether “you would rather see the Democratic Party become more liberal or become more moderate.” While 41 percent said “more liberal,” 54 percent said “more moderate,” despite a recent tendency that Gallup notes for more Democrats to self-identify as liberal.

If the Republican nomination is a foregone conclusion, moreover, the Democratic primaries may attract a lot of independent or center-right voters who might otherwise have voted in the Republican primaries. This is especially likely in states that don’t require primary voters to have registered in advance as members of a party. Many observers assume that each party’s primaries attract disproportionate numbers of “extreme” partisans, but that may not be so for the Democratic presidential primaries in 2020.

For the moment, the ideological divisions between centrist and progressive Democrats are relatively subdued because Democrats are united against Trump and the Republicans. But if they regain power nationally in 2020, the party’s internal divisions will become more salient, and the results of the congressional races will become more important. The Senate will likely be an even greater constraint than the House. If it isn’t clear now, it will become clear then that while the congressional Democrats are more liberal than they were at the start of the Obama presidency, the centrists will set limits on what the party can do.

Centrist New Democrats Want Bigger Role In Party’s Message

Centrist New Democrats Want Bigger Role In Party’s Message

By Emma Dumain, CQ-Roll Call (TNS)

WASHINGTON — Members of the New Democrat Coalition have struggled for years to make their centrist message heard in the larger, and distinctly more left-leaning, House Democratic Caucus.

The 46 self-described “moderate” and “pro-growth” House members in the NDC say they agree with the rest of their caucus on “90 percent of the issues” — it’s the remaining 10 percent that’s harder to summarize.

How difficult? Rep. Derek Kilmer (D-WA) shares a joke he tells about the NDC to illustrate the point.

“The New Dems’ message doesn’t fit on a bumper sticker,” he told CQ Roll Call. “So I said we should stand on the steps of the Capitol and shout, ‘What do we want? A comprehensive approach to job creation that includes tax reform, investments in infrastructure and a pro-growth budget that invests in our future! When do we want it? Well, we want to work in a collaborative way to bring people together!’

“I should probably have thrown ‘education’ in there, too,” Kilmer added. “That would be a part of the chant, too.”

The NDC members have long bemoaned their exclusion from the leadership table that’s typically — especially now — skewed to the left.

But with Democrats of all stripes evaluating what went wrong in the 2014 midterms and wondering how to win back seats in 2016, New Dems see an opening to really be heard — and hopefully taken seriously.

That’s why, for the first time in its nearly 18-year history, the group is putting out a comprehensive legislative agenda.

The two-page document, obtained early by CQ Roll Call, lays out what the New Dems think the party needs to do to compete in moderate swing-districts around the country, where Democrats have suffered major losses.

“There is a role for us to play,” said New Democrat Coalition Chairman Ron Kind of Wisconsin. “We’ve got to have a more active role and meaningful voice, or these districts are going to be harder and harder to defend going forward.”

When the New Dem agenda is formally unveiled Wednesday, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California and Budget Committee ranking member Chris Van Hollen of Maryland are scheduled to join the group at its weekly lunch, a promising signal for Kind.

According to CQ Roll Call’s copy of the agenda, the NDC’s policy priorities include several causes close to Democrats’ hearts, such as “expand(ing) childcare opportunities that help everyone balance work and family,” and “reform(ing) our broken campaign finance system.”

“You can find differences between New Dems and the Progressive Caucus,” said NDC Vice Chairman Jim Himes of Connecticut, “but when we’re with each other, no one ever forgets we agree on the vast majority of policy ideas.”

But closer examination shows the document is a fairly dramatic departure from the talking points being promoted by the party establishment.

This election cycle, House Democratic leaders are touting a campaign trail narrative centered on growing the middle class. In 2014, they spoke largely about eradicating income inequality, extending unemployment insurance and raising the minimum wage.

The New Dems’ “American Prosperity Agenda” highlights policy areas that mainstream Democrats have largely glossed over. The coalition’s “innovation” platform urges members to talk about ways to ensure the United States “lead(s) in the next great discoveries” and “become(s) the global magnet for the world’s top talent.”

Then there are the areas where members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus — who currently make up the largest demographic of House Democrats — are likely to flat-out balk.

The New Democrat Coalition says the party ought to “fix the tax code to create American jobs and help American businesses compete” — or, support a tax overhaul that would be friendly to the business community, which progressives increasingly regard with skepticism.

The members often use phrases preferred by Republicans, such as “lower regulatory obstacles” and “hold our schools accountable for results.”

And then there’s the reference to Trade Promotion Authority, an issue that is already dividing House Democrats and could be the source of some of the biggest intraparty fissures in recent memory.

As the NDC put it: “Aggressively pursue expanding export opportunities so we can make it here and sell it everywhere.”

New Democrats are ready to defend their position on trade, though they say it distracts from all the other issues they care about and has become the one position singled out most often by their critics on the left.

“It’s going to be an important role for the New Dem Coalition, to keep the focus on the policy and not the rhetoric,” Kind said.

Historically, New Democrats have tried to minimize tension between themselves and other factions in the House Democratic Caucus. On economic issues, they are more centrist, but in social matters their records are nearly identical.

Many moderates off Capitol Hill say the New Democrats should avoid presenting themselves as successors to the Blue Dogs, the fiscally and sometimes socially conservative Democrats from predominantly Southern states whose ranks were painfully diminished in the GOP wave of 2010.

The Blue Dogs also were frequent thorns in leadership’s side. The New Dems say they don’t want to be that, either.

But many stakeholders say the coalition needs to be more aggressive when it comes to fighting against campaign tactics they say have cost Democrats their majorities in both chambers, and they hope the “American Prosperity Agenda” is a step in that direction.

“Look,” said Jim Kessler, a co-founder and vice president of policy for Third Way, an outside group that works closely with the New Democrat Coalition. “I think on the one hand, there’s never been more interest in what the New Dems and moderates are saying within the caucus and throughout Washington. At the same time, there’s never been more hostility.”

Kessler said that while the New Democrats want to “govern,” the progressives represent the “advocacy wing of the party that often times is happy having the fight rather than coming to some sort of conclusion.”

Will Marshall, president of the Progressive Policy Institute, said that House Democratic leaders ultimately have a responsibility to represent the ideology of the majority of their members.

“The leaders have to reflect the caucus, right? And numerically speaking, the people in the caucus now have the lefter-tilt,” Marshall explained. “To the extent that there’s resistance (to the New Democrats), I don’t think it comes from the leaders as it does from the left wing of the party. Folks that are in very safe Democratic districts, very urban districts that produce supermajorities, people who are not vulnerable, they’re just under a different set of incentives and frankly they have closer ties to groups that are happier with the party’s status quo than the moderates are.”

New Democrats speaking with CQ Roll Call wouldn’t insert themselves into the fray, with Kind saying: “It’s awfully easy when you don’t win an election to start turning on each other.”

New Democrat Whip John Carney of Delaware just hopes the “American Prosperity Agenda” proves to be a useful tool, in many ways, in the months ahead.

“We’re developing a vision and something that we can all rally behind and understand,” he said. “Here’s what we’re all about. Here’s our area of focus. These are a series of things that we bring to the table and our caucus can build on, our common values and objectives.

“It’s a message we can take to constituents back in our own districts,” he said. “We can use it to pick up districts as we try to expand our caucus.”

Photo: ehpien via Flickr