Democratic strategist Joe McLean on Monday said that winning Democratic midterm candidates won on mainstream issues and that many Democrats have made a mistake saying that the party has moved too far to the left.
“You see all of this reporting about how the party is shifting to the left and the progressives are on the rise,” McLean, who helped lead former President Obama’s Illinois Senate bid before he became president, told Hill.TV’s Buck Sexton and Juanita Tolliver on “Rising.”
“The fact is, the folks who won this month, they won on really mainstream issues. They won on living wage, raising the minimum wage, they won on reasonable, decent working health-care system, they won on education,” he continued.
“There’s nobody out there who is radical in the context of the electorate. The reason these folks won was because they were voicing legitimate concerns of families across the spectrum,” he said. “In political Washington, we’ve made a mistake by saying ‘Oh my god, we’re moving so far to the left.'”
McLean’s comments came after progressive Rep.-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) signaled support for House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) bid to become Speaker in an Instagram livestream over the weekend.
“Right now, out of the field, I would say that [Pelosi] is the most progressive candidate. All of the rebellion for the Speakership are challenges to her right, and so I think it’s important to communicate that,” Ocasio-Cortez said.
— Julia Manchester
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