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“We are not going to be successful if we silence districts like mine,” said Tlaib, who told his colleagues something similar in a controversial call last week. “Not being able to speak for many of my neighbors right now, many of whom are black neighbors, is silencing me. I cannot be silent.
“We are not interested in the unity that asks people to sacrifice their freedom and rights any longer,” said Tlaib, whose district of Michigan is among the poorest in the country. “And if we really want to unify our country, we really have to respect every voice. We say this so willingly when we talk about Trump supporters, but we don’t willingly say it for my black and brown neighbors and LGBTQ neighbors or marginalized people.
Just days after the start of the presidential race, Tlaib and other progressive leaders make it clear there will be no honeymoon for Joe Biden. They have their own takeaways from the election: Major progressive groups are circulating a post-election memo criticizing centrists for playing in the “divide and conquer” racism of Republicans.
For the Liberal ranks, who will increase their number in the Democratic caucus in 2021, the coming months will be essential to their cause. Biden’s choices for his practice and the White House could determine the success of progressives in shaping policy. Several left-wing strategists and activists don’t want Biden to play nice with Senate Republicans despite the president-elect’s expressed desire to work across the aisle – and they don’t expect a Kumbaya moment with members of their own party on the other end of the Democratic spectrum.
“Yes [voters] can walk past damaged homes, school closures and pollution to vote for Biden-Harris, when they feel like they have nothing else they deserve to be heard, ”Tlaib said. ‘suffocating as she expressed her frustration at the end of an interview this week. “I can’t believe people are asking them to shut up.”
Tlaib wants to see a public educator and union activists in important positions. And the congresswoman has made her urgency clear to the president-elect. During his visit to Detroit in October, Tlaib told Biden, “I might not be your favorite member of Congress because I’m on a different schedule, sir.
While the family feud between Democrats dominated most post-election headlines, progressives aren’t letting criticism from their centrist colleagues hinder their push for power in the next Biden White House.
A day before Biden was declared the winner, Senator Bernie Sanders said he will present his own 100-day program to the Senate. “We are going to have to do all that is humanly possible to ensure that Congress and the new president act quickly and aggressively to deal with the enormous crisis facing our country,” he said.
New Rep. Marie Newman from Illinois was more optimistic than some of her progressive colleagues about the possibility of a stimulus package or an infrastructure plan that includes renewable energy jobs aimed at mitigating climate change.
“We have a really good family discussion,” Newman said. “A good ‘come to Jesus’ every now and then is a good thing because we all find out what really is wrong.
New York’s elected representative Mondaire Jones said he was “laser-focused” on what the Justice Department looked like under Biden, and warned against appointing Republicans to key positions. Jones said Democrats should do everything they can in a second round of the Senate in Georgia to win a majority because he wants Biden to be able to install more “progressive thinkers” as federal judges.
And as names like John Kasich, former Republican governor of Ohio, and Democrat Rahm Emanuel, circulate as possible additions to a Biden administration, progressives are keeping a watchful eye. Kasich was quick to blow up the Liberals, claiming they nearly cost Biden the election.
“It would indeed be quite controversial for Joe Biden, who with Kamala Harris has nearly 5 million votes ahead of Donald Trump and Mike Pence, to return to the nomination of Republicans to his cabinet,” Jones said. “It’s not even just Republicans versus Democrats. It’s about having the right kinds of Democrats at the head. “
Progressive groups including Justice Democrats, Sunrise Movement and Data for Progress are circulating a memo about their diagnosis of the election results, turning moderate attacks on their heads.
“Republican attacks on Democrats this round on the basis of terms like ‘defund the police’ or ‘socialism’ have become scapegoats for officials like Abigail Spanberger, Conor Lamb and other top Democrats,” the Minister said. memo, which was first shared with POLITICO. “Not a single Democrat – progressive or otherwise – has argued that Democrats should run primarily on these themes.”
“These attacks will never go away, nor will the demands for reform of social movements,” the memo continued. “The attacks are designed to stir up racial resentment.”
In a controversial call last week among House Democrats, Spanberger – who barely clung to her swing neighborhood of Virginia – lambasted the Liberals. “No one should ever say ‘defund the police’ again, otherwise the party would be ‘torn apart’ in 2022,” she said. Other moderate blamed the left’s call to ban fracking on the Democrats’ disappointing performance in the ballot.
Progressive groups have created their own disastrous diagnosis in their memo and called on moderates to adopt a clear economic message, which they said was lacking this year. Democrats will lose the House in 2022, they wrote, if “we abandon our fundamental progressive base and agenda.”
Progressives have said they are “afraid” of a world in which Biden is making bipartisan appeals to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell with limited results.
“This approach to governance could really threaten party unity and the 2022 midterm, as Mitch McConnell’s sole focus will be to get Joe Biden to swallow as many toxic toxic pills as possible, which will make the campaign harder. halfway through, ”said Waleed Shahid, a spokesperson for Justice Democrats. If McConnell controls the Senate, Shahid said, the fundamental question will be “how hard will the Democrats play.”
Progressive lawmakers too argue that Democrats have never formed an offensive strategy on climate change and racial justice, and instead, they were forced to defend their policies on Republican terms.
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez from New York told POLITICO in an interview shortly after the election that Democrats would continue to play defense in the rotating seats if they didn’t establish a cohesive message on race and racism .
“It’s not just a moral question about how you deal with racism in elections, but now it’s an existential crisis for the Democratic Party,” Ocasio-Cortez said. The problem, she says, is that Democrats don’t want to talk about race. “Anti-racism plays zero percent of a role in Democratic electoral strategy – zero, explicitly, implicitly,” she continued. “I don’t tell people to point out virtue, but there is no plan for it.”
Ocasio-Cortez, like the moderates, was not happy with the party’s message on climate change, which she said ended with “not the ‘Green New Deal’ and ‘we love fracking.’
“It is not even necessary to introduce the Green New Deal in this area,” she said. “Why aren’t we talking about creating 20 million jobs, installing a solar panel on every roof. We must speak in pictures, in pictures and in sounds. ”
It is time, Ocasio-Cortez said, for Democrats to “take their gloves off with Republicans.”
“We’re always talking about bipartisanship and how much we love working with Republicans all the time in a lot of these sensitive areas,” she said. “We need to have an unapologetic agenda, have a real alternative and a counter message that is distinct from the Republican Party instead of trying to play with notions of civility. … I really hope a lot of people know that this idea that we can win over white voters on a civility argument is not a reliable strategy.
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