Progressives looking to change the narrative

Progressives are ready to change the storyline that their wing of the party is losing Democrats’ civil war. 

Candidate defeats and a rash of negative headlines have caused soul searching on the left, prompting some to recalibrate what they need to do to maintain credibility going into a challenging midterm cycle.  

Two top progressives in the House — Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) and Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) — believe Democrats still have a shot at keeping Congress. But to do that, they told The Hill, the party must deliver economically in the short term for their voters, while putting more candidates in office who can push their progressive message into the future.  

“Every time someone brings up a loss, I’m like, ‘let me give you two for that. Two wins,’ ” Jayapal said in a wide-ranging conversation Monday in her Capitol Hill office. 

“It’s a narrative that benefits the people that are in power or have power in our political process. But the reality is the progressive movement is ascendent in this country,” she said. “We have completely changed the narrative of what it means to invest in working people.” 

To be sure, that view may be a rosy one. Painful primary losses have offset some of the excitement of early wins, and Republicans are widely expected to take control of the House with the midterm elections, driven in large part by the economic pain many are feeling.

But Jayapal and Khanna warn that pain, largely from the sky-high inflation that hits lower- and middle-class Americans the hardest, won’t improve without more intervention from Congress and the White House — the type of intervention progressives have long pushed for, and President Biden has promised. 

During the last election, Biden wooed many reluctant voters by pitching an FDR-style vision he said would move people out of debilitating circumstances. In turn, enough people believed in that promise to send him to the Oval Office.  

But much of that pledge has since faded, frayed or completely fallen apart, causing lawmakers and activists on the left to push more strongly than their moderate counterparts to lead with a populist vision. If they don’t, some argue, they risk giving the GOP control in the fall and beyond. 

“I am convinced a bold, populist, aspirational economic message can inspire and win,” said Khanna, another top House progressive searching for new ways to address the current problems. “We need to rebuild our economy around high-wage jobs for all and future industries. That should be the core of our mantra.”  

The three-term congressman, who was elected in 2016 when former President Trump rose to prominence, has been expressing concerns for months, most recently in a New York Times op-ed that resisted the desire to ding the other side for the stagnation. 

“There is no patience for incrementalism or political spin about economic numbers in these times,” he wrote. “Democrats can’t just blame the Republicans for lacking a plan.” 

Khanna’s preferred path out of the danger zone includes forming a special inflation task force and using a World War II-era measure called “preemptive buying,” which gives the government authority to buy necessary items such as food and oil globally when prices drop. The idea of populist economic reform expands on what Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) focused on during the presidential election, when Khanna co-chaired his campaign, and was prevalent in former President Clinton’s administration.  

He and Jayapal both enjoy a close working relationship with the current White House.

As chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Jayapal pointed to several accomplishments she believes Democrats can campaign on in the fall.  

Biden’s embrace of tax reform thrilled skeptical liberals who initially wondered if he’d be too fiscally moderate to push for it. When he cut stimulus checks to address inequalities exacerbated by COVID-19, even more were happy that Americans’ daily struggles from the pandemic could be eased. And he’s canceled tens of millions of dollars in student debt with the possibility of more to come, partially checking off one of liberals’ biggest wish list items — though falling far short of what many would like to see.

“The president has said to me, personally, the Progressive Caucus has had the president’s back on many, many things,” Jayapal said.  

What Jayapal considers one of the left’s biggest wins, however, didn’t quite come to fruition. The House passed Biden’s massive social spending and climate change Build Back Better package, but it didn’t move in the Senate after two moderate Democrats refused to back it. Still, the congresswoman from Washington says the lower chamber’s passage shows progressives were able to move a popular agenda backed by Biden. On top of that, she said, the White House has already enacted many of their most important executive actions.

“This bigger narrative shift has not been covered very much,” she said. “And I think it’s really important.” 

“Would we like them to move even faster?” Jayapal conceded, “Definitely.”  

While she and others in the House are still willing to work closely with administration officials, others are sharpening their criticism of the president, whose approval rating is now below 40 percent. In the Senate, Sanders recently called for a broad change of direction on vision and policy, while Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) recently wrote it’s not too late to get some wins on the books, aiming to offer a more optimistic tone. Both were in the context of the midterms. 

But while the focus in Congress has been searching for a way out of the muck — no easy task with a narrow majority and history working against their favor — progressives on the outside are facing their own series of challenges.  

“We need to be telling folks that we aren’t losing steam,” said Connor Farrell, the founder of Left Rising, a group aimed at electing more liberal Democrats to office. “We have won several high-profile primaries while being outspent by the establishment.”  

The most recent was a surprise victory in Oregon’s 5th Congressional District, where progressive Jamie McLeod-Skinner ousted conservative Democratic Rep. Kurt Schrader, who was backed by Biden.

“We have expanded the ‘squad’ and its allies despite a major regressive backlash from corporate establishment forces,” he said.

Liberal strategists and allied groups are nonetheless upset over other primary losses, and progressives who were once bullish on their chances to oust top-tier incumbents are worried public defeats have halted their momentum. 

They watched their biggest and most high-profile race, a rematch in Texas’s 28th Congressional District, slip away by just a few hundred votes, when voters chose Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas) over activist Jessica Cisneros. Earlier, they saw another big rematch in Ohio’s 11th Congressional District go to Rep. Shontel Brown (D-Ohio) over activist and Sanders ally Nina Turner. And in New York, a young Muslim women named Rana Abdelhamid, who was gaining traction in pockets of Queens, saw her chances extinguished after a complex redistricting process effectively pushed out lesser-known candidates from the 12th Congressional District.  

To make matters worse, voters in San Francisco, one of the most liberal cities in the country, voted to recall District Attorney Chesa Boudin, a staunch progressive who sought to curb police influence. 

Still, some progressives see success more holistically. They suggest there’s a longer-term strategy at play, where recruiting and successfully slotting new members into office takes time. 

“It’s about expectation setting,” said Farrell. “In 2018, we got [Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez] elected; in 2020, [Reps.] Cori [Bush] and Jamaal [Bowman]. In 2022, we’ll send at least two new [progressive members] to Congress, despite the major pushback. We are winning.”