By admin “Democrats have to deliver” was the consensus mantra after the party’s stunning midterm election victories. But since Election Day, Democrats have been talking more about who should be Speaker of the House and Senate Majority Leader than about their top legislative priorities and how they will help voters. And now that Senator Chris Van Hollen announced a challenge to Senator Minority Leader Chuck Schumer for top Senate job, we have an upper chamber cage match that will consume Washington for the rest of the month.
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Of course, folks can argue that leadership choices directly shape the subsequent legislative agenda. Some of the elected officials who would deny top slots to the Democrats’ current leaders—House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer—speak vaguely about a “new generation of leadership.” But more ideological critics see the leadership battles as opportunities to push their policies.
For example, Representative-elect Melat Kiros of Colorado, when asked what could convince her to support Jeffries, said:
I want to see Medicare for All voted on. I want to see a data center moratorium voted on. I want to see us ending military sales to Israel. And I want us to end the war in Iran … my demand is not that Leader Jeffries specifically supports these things himself, right? My demand is that he lets us vote on it … These are populist politics that won us the midterms.
Senator Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent who caucuses with Democrats, now flatly opposes Schumer for majority leader. He told The Nation:
Chuck’s views are way out of touch with where the American people are at … You can start off with US military aid to Israel [which Schumer has supported] … The United States should not provide another nickel of military aid to Israel, period … Is Chuck prepared to fight for what the American people want, which is dealing with massive levels of income and wealth inequality by imposing a billionaire tax? … I don’t think so. On [artificial intelligence], Chuck was the minority leader and did nothing significant to address what is the most transformational technology in the history of the world being pushed by a handful of multibillionaires.
The political analyses of Kiros and Sanders are, at minimum, debatable. None of the Senate Democratic candidates who flipped Republican seats last week ran on Medicare for All except for Maine’s Troy Jackson, the only one to pick up a seat in a state Donald Trump lost. Israel was infrequently discussed in most general election races, and a recent poll from the Chicago Council on Global Affairs found only 35 percent of Americans want to end all military aid for Israel (while an additional 21 percent wanted a reduction in aid). Voters in deep blue California rejected a ballot initiative calling for a wealth tax on billionaires.
Sure, skepticism of data centers and artificial intelligence is widespread, with voters on Election Day approving at least 44 local ballot initiatives restricting data centers. But neither Jeffries nor Schumer has been a cheerleader for data centers or AI, so it’s odd to assume they’ll resist acting.
It’s also unclear how forcing votes on many of these progressive policies—without enough votes to pass them—will help “deliver” anything tangible to voters. More likely, those votes will only serve to divide the Democratic caucus.
For example, Sanders’ Medicare for All bill currently has 19 sponsors. For the next Congress, he’s losing one to retirement while gaining four more (Senators-elect Abdul El-Sayed of Michigan, Peggy Flanagan of Minnesota, Julianna Stratton of Illinois, and Maine’s Jackson). That’s 23 out of an expected 56 Democratic senators in the new Congress, hardly enough leverage to demand a vote, let alone win a vote.
In the House, Representative Pramila Jayapal’s parallel bill has 119 sponsors, which currently constitutes a majority of the Democrats’ 214-seat caucus (excluding one vacancy from a Democratic resignation). But that caucus is about to expand to an estimated 260. Twenty current sponsors are leaving Congress, while National Nurses United, in a post-election statement, name-checked 13 incoming representatives who ran on Medicare for All. That may not be a comprehensive list, and again, numbers can grow over time. Still, we are probably looking at a House Democratic caucus with around half—give or take, and more likely, take—in favor of Medicare for All, which is nowhere near enough to pass the chamber.
We also have the example of a House vote last July on a measure to zero out military aid to Israel. Out of 215 Democrats seated at the time, 103—slightly less than half—voted for it. That number might be larger if the vote were taken next year, but it would likely be another case of the vote dividing the caucus without the measure becoming law. (Another unknown: Who will lead the new Israeli government and whether the new government changes any Palestinian policies, factors that could affect support for cutting off aid.)
Kiros is not the only incoming Democratic legislator pressuring leaders to hold floor votes without having the votes in hand. Representative-elect Don Leonard of Ohio, who has not committed to supporting Jeffries, said on Joy Reid’s podcast that one of his demands is a vote on aid to Israel: “I’m not asking every member to agree with me on that position. I want everybody to go on record.”
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But they have it backward. As House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi explained her basic philosophy: “You get the votes, and you take the vote.” In other words, first you do the behind-the-scenes work to secure the necessary support, then once you have it, you don’t waste any time. Calling the vote before you have the votes in hand is a strategy for losing votes, angering fellow caucus members, and delivering nothing for your constituents—which is why House Speakers and Senate Majority Leaders typically don’t prematurely promise floor votes to impatient factions.
Van Hollen, in an interview on MS NOW announcing his bid, didn’t promise show votes. But when asked by anchor Jen Psaki “what’s the difference” between him and Schumer, he vastly overstated the case. “I believe we need to end [the Iran war] now, immediately—to use all our power to do that,” replied Van Hollen, “That means not one more penny spent on this war so that we can bring [gas] prices down right away.” Setting aside the questionable assertion that cutting off funds would immediately bring down gas prices (since Iran’s control of the Strait of Hormuz could keep choking oil supply), Van Hollen’s rhetoric is little different than Schumer’s. The day after the election Schumer said, “We are going to end the war. We have some Republicans already who have joined us in ending the war, and the Founding Fathers had the power of the purse as one of the ways of deterring a president who does war without the consent of the American people.”
Asked about Medicare for All, Van Hollen did not promise an immediate vote. “We’d have a better health care system if we got to Medicare for All [but] I don’t see us getting there all at once,” acknowledged Van Hollen, “I don’t think we have the political ability to do that. But what we can do is improve it right away,” offering intermediary steps such as opening up Medicare to children and people over 55. Such an incremental approach does not provide much of a contrast with the pragmatic Schumer.
Van Hollen was most pointed when accusing Schumer of siding with losing Senate primary candidates in “Michigan and Minnesota” who were “backed by AIPAC and crypto.” However, there are two problems with this assertion. One, Schumer didn’t publicly back a candidate in the Minnesota primary. Two, Schumer’s recruit for Ohio, Sherrod Brown, is so hated by the cryptocurrency industry that it spent $64 million trying to defeat him. So instead of helping the Democratic caucus work together towards common goals, Van Hollen is taking cheap shots and sowing division.
If Democrats are serious about delivering for voters, they will get out of circular-firing-squad formation and ask themselves: What is the one issue we all campaigned on that unmistakably resonated with voters and, if we followed through, would instantly ease the cost of living?
The obvious answer: rolling back Trump’s tariffs.
Democrats can unify around a tariff reduction with relative ease. And many Republicans are free-traders at heart, too, so the Senate might clear 60 votes to avoid a filibuster, and maybe even have an outside shot at a veto-proof supermajority, which would require about 30 House Republicans and 11 Senate Republicans. Or, if enough Republicans aren’t willing to help, then voters will know who is standing in the way of making their gas and groceries cost less.
That said, nothing is entirely simple. Should Democrats try to repeal specific tariffs Trump has imposed or revisit the underlying laws that give the president authority to set some tariff rates? Are there tariffs some Democrats might want to keep in place? What approaches might be more likely to attract Republican support?
“There is overwhelming support for repealing the tariffs on products from Canada,” Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, soon to chair the Senate Finance Committee, told The Wall Street Journal last week. But broader reforms may not unify Democrats, let alone garner bipartisan support. Former Representative Dale Kildee, who represented Flint, Michigan, told the Journal, “Where we do see some disagreement is on specific, targeted tariffs and trade actions,” pointing to steel and aluminum imports.
From a policy standpoint, crafting the perfect tariff-reduction bill matters far less than getting some tariff-reduction bill to the floor quickly, while Republicans reel and the public is hungry for proof their votes meant something to their wallets. Some relief is better than no relief, and Democrats should strike while the proverbial iron is hot.
If every Democrat approached this interregnum with a collaborative spirit, everyone would reap the benefits. If the next few months are rife with squabbling and gamesmanship, voter frustrations that have been directed primarily at Republicans will quickly spread to Democrats.
Voters didn’t vote to change names on office doors. They voted to lower their costs—time to act like it.
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