The rise of a progressive movement in Congress, over the last twenty years, is an underreported story in American politics. At Netroots Nation, the country’s largest gathering of like-minded progressives, the message Saturday in Chicago was to redouble the effort even if such goals as universal health care and gun safety and filibuster reform have so far proven elusive.
“We as progressives are expanding the realm of what’s possible,” said newly elected Representative Summer Lee, D‑Pennsylvania, who won in a Pittsburgh district despite pro-Israel PACs spending millions of dollars to block her.
A bevy of progressive lawmakers delivered a two-front challenge to their party: Democrats should organize to resist ultra MAGA Republican forces, but also work to broaden the party’s constituency. Integral is rejection of “neo-liberal trickle down politics,” said Representative Pramila Jayapal, D‑Washington, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.
Both Republican and Democratic administration have an “oligarchy” in Washington, D.C., she added, “where power is exercised by money.”
The Democrats have spent far too much time courting affluent, upper middle class, college-educated voters while, in Jayapal’s view, ignoring natural constituencies which don’t always show up to vote. Said Jayapal:: “It is our great base of poor people, black and brown, Indigenous voters, immigrants, young people who won’t swing Republican but will swing right out to the couch if we don’t work to bring them in, win their trust and their votes.”
As for the ultra MAGA forces, Jayapal said: “Today we are facing down a violent movement of fascism that aims to destroy institutions in the name of a strongman.”
But blunt talk was not just directed at Donald Trump. The second position in Republican presidential polls is held by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, promulgator of the “Don’t Say Gay” bill and opponent of diversity and inclusiveness programs in his state’s schools.
“I come from a state run by a ______ (expletive) fascist,” said Representative Maxwell Frost, D‑Florida, at twenty-seven the first “Generation Z” member of the U.S. House of Representatives. Frost came to Congress after work in the March for Our Lives movement, organized in the wake of the Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School massacre which killed seventeen students and administrators.
Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D‑Illinois, called out Republicans for refusing to allow a House floor vote on gun safety legislation, even as the country averages more than one mass shooting per day (the latest, in Georgia, saw four people killed). Just five Republicans, along with the 213 Democrats„ are needed to sign a discharge petition in the 435-member House of Representatives.
None have come forward to do so.
“They are chicken___ (expletive): They are afraid to go against the party,” said Schakowsky, symbolic of changes that have come over Congress. She also noted near-unanimous Republican support for an anti-abortion amendment as House members voted on the defense authorization bill.
Schakowsky represents a Chicago district once held by Democratic insider and later Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel.
Such blunt and powerful talk has not always been enough for some in the Netroots Nation audience. In 2015, at Las Vegas, Black Lives Matter demonstrators disrupted a presidential forum just as Senator Bernie Sanders was talking about high rates of youth unemployment among African Americans.
In Chicago on Saturday, panel moderator, Netroots Nation board member, and rapper Reggie Hubbard gave a shout out not only to Ukrainians but also to what he described as the oppressed of the Holy Land. “We need people who have experienced occupation, not only but Palestinian people who have now experienced occupation and discrimination for seventy-live years.”
It wasn’t enough for some in the audience.
A panel of House members was disrupted with flags and chants of “Israel is a racist state.” Schakowsky, who is Jewish, tried to calm the protest. “I am your ally… Know your allies,” she said. “I am absolutely opposed to the kind of violence against the Palestinians that is happening right now.”
Jayapal delivered a remark sure to be controversial back home in Seattle.
“I want to make it clear,” she said. “We have been fighting to make it clear Israel is a racist state, that the Palestinian people deserve self-determination and autonomy, that a two-state solution is slipping away from us that it does not even feel possible.”
Hubbard came back onstage to admonish the protesters.
“This ain’t progress, y’all,” said he. “We all need to respect the First Amendment but we need to respect one another.”
Half of the Democrats’ two hundred and thirteen-member House contingent now belong to the Congressional Progressive Caucus. They have helped shape the agenda of the Biden-Harris administration.
Moderator Markos Moulitsas, founder and proprietor of the popular Daily Kos community, asked Jayapal: “What have you done to whip that caucus into shape?”
She delivered a lesson in real politic. Push the debate, push the compromise in your direction, and sign off when you achieve something substantive. She cited the Inflation Reduction Act, with its enormous investment in clean energy. . “We don’t have to win every fight,” sad Jayapal. “Sometimes the fight (itself) is worthwhile.” Adding: “We’re always progressive, and we want more.”
Jayapal has put together a $4.5 million PAC to support progressive candidates and fend off challengers. The outspoken Representative Ilhan Omar, D‑Minnesota, barely withstood a primary challenge in 2022 and was recently stripped of her seat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee by the Republican Majority.
Jayapal has a mixed record back home. She poured money into State Representative Beth Doglio’s campaign for a vacant 10th Congressional District seat in 2020, only to see a less progressive rival, Marilyn Strickland, win the seat in a rout. Meanwhile, a trio of “Berniecrat” challengers have taken on Jayapal’s colleagues Representatives Adam Smith, Rick Larsen and Derek Kilmer, D‑Washington. None has been able to break 15 percent of the vote.
Still, the Congressional Progressive Caucus is a force to be reckoned with, and oblivious to the old maxim that newly elected members of Congress should keep quiet and build seniority. “I did not run to wait,” said Frost, arguably the most charismatic of the newly elected.
Jayapal is serving her fourth House term, and said Saturday that she intends to pass the torch of Congressional Progressive Caucus leadership after the current Congress has adjourned for the last time. She will not seek to lead the CPC in the next Congress, but will assume the role of a wise adviser and kibitzer.
Ms. Jayapal’s thank-you check from the GOP is the mail.