Incoming Democrats rally around affordability and accountability
Democrats who won in the midterms, including candidates in places previously considered off the blue map and Democrats in strongholds, campaigned on economic populism and accountability, and the party says that common ground will carry into the new Congress. Lawmakers in the anti-establishment incoming class have more in common with each other than divisions do, even across ideological factions, and voters sent a message to work on affordability and rein in the Trump administration.
The challenge, as Democrats describe it, comes when the newcomers meet a Washington machine they view as stuck to the status quo, and when they confront institutional barriers and a president with a veto pen that could prevent the changes voters demanded. Political operatives and officials said the shared agenda is clear and Democrats need to stay focused on it, lest they lose seats they just won in parts of the country where they previously were not getting traction.
“They got to just keep being who they are,” said Joe Maxwell, president of Farm Action Fund, a non-profit focused on building back rural communities. “There’s a whole different rhythm and politics and narrative to be able to be effective in Washington DC.”
Before the new lawmakers take the oath of office, they will decide whether to keep their party’s leaders. In the Senate, Chris Van Hollen announced a challenge to longtime leader Chuck Schumer. On the House side, Hakeem Jeffries so far appears to have the speaker job.
In a speech at the Democrats’ meetup in Denver on Friday, Van Hollen said his bid responded to voters’ calls for a political system that serves them. “We should not be preserving our institutions if they are not delivering for the American people,” he said. “And we should be making delivering for the American people the single mission of our government, even when that means shaking things up.”
Democrats insist that disagreement over a leader does not mean deep disagreement about the path forward. Maurice Mitchell, the leader of the Working Families party, said the focus on faction is coming from the wrong place. “There’s a very small set of consultants and self-interested commentators and donor-aligned op-ed writers who are crashing out on the internet right now,” Mitchell said. “I think it would be a distraction to focus on a factional fight that they are so thirsty for, when Tuesday suggested that you should be past the narrow politics of factionalism inside the Democratic party.”
Mitchell said this month’s wins present a “generational opportunity” to deliver results, and that fitting them into a narrow framework pitting moderates versus progressives misses the point. “We just want to get things done, and we think that there’s a big terrain to get things done,” he said.
The party once again becomes a big tent, full of people from different parts of the country with varying life experiences. Jane Kleeb, the chair of the Nebraska Democratic party, said the mix of Democrats elected amounts to “a slice of America governing.” “For me, that means we’re going to have a much more durable party,” Kleeb said. “It’s not going to be a one-note party.”
John Dickerson, the former CBS News journalist, said the tension is inherent in winning. “A party big enough to win everywhere has to hold people who disagree. The tension comes with winning. When coverage treats that tension as a crack-up or a flaw, it mistakes how the game works for a threat to the game. Tackling isn’t an obstacle to football. Tackling is football,” Dickerson said.
Newly elected Democratic lawmakers have expressed a willingness to talk to anyone, and they highlighted conversations with voters who disagreed with them on the campaign trail while running against how both parties do politics. Abdul El-Sayed, the progressive who won the US Senate race in Michigan, has said Trump can call Medicare for All “Trumpcare for All” if he wants, as long as it makes it into law.
Some new members will join multiple Democratic caucuses that seem to have competing ideologies, and the various caucuses announced big increases in membership after the election, from the progressive to the centrist New Democrats. Sam Forstag, a smoke jumper who flipped a congressional district in Montana, joined both the Progressive and Blue Dog caucuses, saying he would be one of few Democrats sitting in both. Being in both rooms would give him “a chance to fight for populist economic policies that are actually going to help working people and finally put us all back at the front of the line,” Forstag said.
“What you realize once you get elected is that you now are the establishment,” Kleeb said. “So I think you’ll see a reopening of what the establishment means, and I do think it’s really good that the DC traditional establishment does get shook up.”
Affordability is the clearest front-runner on a shared Democratic agenda. The list includes working to end the war in Iran to lower gas prices, rolling back tariffs, restoring subsidies on the health insurance exchanges that have produced large cost increases, and reversing upcoming cuts to social services.
Glenn Ivey, a Democratic representative from Maryland, said he had not heard a Democrat argue otherwise. “I haven’t heard any Democrat with a different position on those,” Ivey said. “Everybody wants to end the war. Everybody wants to roll back the tariffs. Everybody wants gas and grocery prices to go down. Everybody wants to help expand healthcare tax credits and restore Medicaid and the like.”
Other bills are narrower but could be simple ways to respond to affordability. Maxwell, of the Farm Action Fund, said a bipartisan bill has already been filed to address consolidation in the meatpacking industry, which would help lower meat prices. Maxwell also argued that Democrats should work on single-issue or pared-down bills rather than weighty omnibus measures that obscure what lawmakers do, saying people need to see movement.
The second-most-frequent refrain from voters was to bring accountability to the Trump administration. Amanda Litman, the founder of the progressive candidate pipeline Run for Something, said it would be a mistake for Democrats to forgo oversight in the name of putting the past behind them. She said the effort is not a revenge or retribution campaign but an effort to show voters there needs to be respect for the law. “At the very least, we’ve killed how many people in fishing boats off the shore?” Litman said. “It would be useful to have some hearings.”
There is also consistent support for institutional reforms aimed at restoring public trust in Congress. A group of 50 incoming freshmen sent a letter to Democratic leadership calling for a stock trading ban, a frequent campaign promise for Democrats and some Republicans this year. “A stock trading ban alone will not fix Washington, but it is the fastest way to show voters we heard them,” the group wrote. “This rule would be a down payment on much-needed reform to prevent elected and appointed government officials and their spouses from trading stocks. We promised our communities we would clean up this place. In January, we should do just that.”
At the post-election Democratic gathering in Denver this week, Jeffries said banning congressional stock trading was on the menu. He also said he supported new rules limiting how long members of Congress can serve as leaders on committees, in an effort to give new, younger lawmakers a chance at leading.
Mitchell, of the Working Families party, said lawmakers should not hedge their bills against whether Trump will veto them. “They voted people in to fight for them,” Mitchell said. “It’s their job to pass the legislation in line with what the voters want, and dare the president not to sign that legislation.”
Democrats flipped state legislatures in several states and now have new governing trifectas that make policy wins more possible at the state level, which could serve as a balm to the partisan gridlock common in Washington. When these states pass new laws, “we need to communicate governing wins,” Kleeb said.
Communication will be key, Democrats said. Peggy Flanagan, the Minnesota senator-elect, said that if a piece of legislation meets a roadblock in Congress, Democrats should name it, and if Trump vetoes a bill, make clear that he is responsible. Flanagan said voters understood that this election was not “business as usual” and that they demanded change, and that some people in power may “sort of be kicking and screaming along the way with this change.” Flanagan said her job is to represent the Minnesotans who shared their deeply personal struggles.
Litman said the social media prowess of the incoming class means each lawmaker functions as their own small media entity, and that they can use that reach to show the work they are doing on the agendas they ran on. “I do think it is really, really important for Democrats in Congress to get caught trying,” Litman said.
The stakes are high for Democrats to show the cross-partisan group of voters who elected them that they can govern, or they will face the same rebuke Republicans got this year, Mitchell said. “They will not be kind to Democrats,” Mitchell said of voters who are sick of the status quo. “On the flip side, if Democrats actually deliver, we could be talking about the beginnings of a realignment in this country.”