Top Democratic officials, lawmakers and strategists are openly second-guessing their party’s campaign pitch and tactics, reflecting a growing sense that Democrats have failed to coalesce around one effective message with enough time to stave off major losses in the House and possibly decisive defeats in the tightly contested Senate.
The criticisms by Democrats in the final days of the midterm elections signal mounting anxiety as Republicans hammer away with attacks over the economy and public safety. For weeks, Democrats have offered a scattershot case of their own, accusing their opponents of wanting to gut abortion rights, shred the social safety net and shake the foundations of American democracy.
Yet as the country struggles with high gas prices, record inflation and economic uncertainty, some Democrats now acknowledge that their kitchen-sink approach may be lacking.
Even among the kibitzing chorus, there’s little agreement over exactly what could cost the party control of Congress. In areas where victory depends on high Black voter turnout, Democrats worry that they are not mobilizing that constituency. Others say there has been too much focus on abortion rights and too little attention on worries about crime or the cost of living. And across the country, Democrats point to an inadequate economic message and an inability to effectively herald their legislative accomplishments.
“The truth is, Democrats have done a poor job of communicating our approach to the economy,” said Representative Elissa Slotkin, a Democrat from Michigan who is in one of this year’s most competitive races. “I have no idea if I’m going to win my election — it’s going to be a nail biter. But if you can’t speak directly to people’s pocketbook and talk about our vision for the economy, you’re just having half a conversation.”
Ms. Slotkin is far from alone in her criticism.
Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont has sounded alarm bells that Democrats are struggling to motivate working-class voters. Former President Barack Obama, who is traveling the country to campaign in some of the tightest races for Senate and governor, urged Democrats not to be “a buzz kill” by making people feel as if they were “walking on eggshells” when it came to issues like race and gender.
And several prominent Democrats have worried that their party has not fully acknowledged the pain of rising prices — or effectively pointed the finger at Republicans over the higher costs.
“If Republicans are going to attack on inflation, you should turn to them and say, ‘What the hell have you done?’ The answer is nothing,” said Senator Bob Casey, Democrat of Pennsylvania. “And I think Democrats should talk about that more.
Asked last week whether it was too late to adopt such an approach, Mr. Casey added, “We’ve got to hustle and do it quick.”
While many of the party’s Senate candidates are outpacing President Biden’s underwater approval rating, which is below his national average in several key swing states, strategists warn that there are limits to how much candidates can defy this year’s political gravity — no matter their message.
Some Democrats believe that time has simply run out for any significant shift in strategy that could change the fundamental dynamics of the race.
In Wisconsin, the focus of the campaigns for both Senate and governor have shifted to crime after tens of millions of dollars of Republican attacks.
Only in recent weeks have Democrats tried to fight back, promoting Gov. Tony Evers’s efforts to direct funding to law enforcement agencies.
“It’s late in the game,” said David Bowen, a Democratic state assemblyman from Milwaukee. “Especially as you get bogged down into what is the proper strategy to use in some of these races.”
"When it comes to murder in particular, conservatives’ obsession with making guns easier to get plainly makes the problem worse." https://t.co/tbRdtHep1e
republican so-called "anti-crime" policies are actually explicitly designed to increase crime as both a way to punish liberal cities and to boost their own electoral prospects https://t.co/cX9zvXN2kY
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., toured Texas this weekend looking to energize progressive voters with days to go until the midterm election, including in a key congressional race in South Texas.
The two-time Democratic presidential candidate visited Central Texas on Saturday and then headed south Sunday to the Rio Grande Valley, where he held a rally with Michelle Vallejo, who is running for the 15th Congressional District. It is an open seat that Republicans are eager to flip — and one where national Democrats have declined to go all in, sparking frustration inside the party.
“The vote right here in this district could determine which party controls the U.S. House of Representatives, and I think the choice is clear,” Sanders said at the McAllen rally with Vallejo. “The choice is whether we give more tax breaks to billionaires and cut Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, education and other needed programs — or whether we stand up for the working class of this country. Michelle Vallejo is on the right side.”
Republicans are targeting the 15th District and two others in South Texas, hoping to capitalize on President Joe Biden’s underperformance there in 2020 and make new inroads with Hispanic voters. Vallejo narrowly defeated a more moderate Democrat in the primary runoff and now faces Republican Monica De La Cruz, who ran a surprisingly close race in the 15th District in 2020, prior to redistricting.
Sanders’ visit to Texas came about halfway through the early voting period — and it came eight days after former President Donald Trump made his own visit to South Texas, hoping to juice turnout for the congressional races. De La Cruz, who has Trump’s endorsement, did not attend the rally, instead addressing the crowd through a brief video message.
Some prominent in-state Democrats have been disappointed with national outside groups who have not done any serious TV spending in the 15th District, instead prioritizing the two other South Texas districts. That has left Vallejo to run as a decisive underdog in a district that Republicans already redrew to be more favorable to them.
“No matter what people outside of South Texas want to think or claim that we don’t have this win,” Vallejo said at the rally, “I know that we are on our path to victory, and we’re gonna win this race on Nov. 8.”
In her speech, Vallejo continued to embrace Sanders’ signature proposal — the single-payer health care model known as Medicare for All — saying she is “running to fight for Medicare for All because our families should not be forced to go to Mexico to get the medical care they deserve.” And Vallejo knocked De La Cruz as an “extremist,” who, among other things, wants to ban abortion without exceptions for rape or incest. De La Cruz has said she supports abortion “only to save the life of the mother.”
Prior to the Sanders rally, De La Cruz had said she welcomed him campaigning with Vallejo “because it clarifies the choice in this election.”
“Growing up, my abuelita always told me: ‘Dime con quién andas, y te diré quién eres,’ ” De La Cruz said in a statement after the rally. “By campaigning with the most extreme member of the Senate, my socialist opponent has told South Texans exactly who she is and why she is unfit to represent us in Washington.”
Vallejo was joined at the McAllen rally by two other Sanders allies: Greg Casar, a former Austin City Council member who is likely headed to Congress in January from a Central Texas district, as well as Jessica Cisneros, the former two-time primary challenger to U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Laredo.
On Saturday, Sanders campaigned in San Marcos and Austin with Casar, whose November race is not competitive. After he took the stage in San Marcos, Sanders predicted Casar is “going to be one of the outstanding political leaders in this country.”
Sanders is on an eight-state tour to turn out progressive voters, recently telling The New York Times that he is “a little bit concerned that the energy level for young people, working-class people” is flagging. He held the San Marcos stop at Texas State University.
“The truth is that a midterm election is not as sexy as a presidential election,” Sanders said in San Marcos, telling attendees to tell their friends they are “dead wrong” if they do not think their vote matters right now.
In the evening, they rallied with local labor leaders in the parking lot of the state Democratic Party headquarters in Austin.
Sanders said the midterms were an election in which the country’s future was on the ballot and he blamed right-wing extremists for the threats to democracy. He broadly endorsed Democratic leaders in Texas and encouraged people to vote, but he did not specifically endorse any statewide candidates.
Yeah, De La Cruz needs to team up with Rubio. He better keep his eye on Demings. She’s out raising him $$$ plus he can’t slam her for being anti-crime. Former police chief? The only obstacle is statewide voter recognition. I’m very, very, very cautiously optimistic. Been disappointed by this stupid corrupt cesspool of a state for years. Mailing out my final stack of GOTV postcards. Hey, it helps.🗽☮️👍
It’s been a rough year for progressives, or so the headlines tell us. Pundits have been quick to elegize the left electoral movement after several high-profile primary defeats in New York, Illinois and Texas. “Left loses momentum.” “Progressives are in danger of losing influence.” Pundits are “seeing limits on the political support for their reformist vision of the country” with this year’s “spate of losses” only the “latest blow to progressive power,” as the Bernie Sanders wing of the Democratic Party struggles “to find a winning formula.”
The jubilant mood at the Vermont senator’s September roundtable with a group of progressive House primary winners, then, might come as a surprise. “The Squad” — the moniker claimed by the troupe of progressive and democratic-socialist insurgents who started elbowing their way into the House in 2018 — is expected to number in the double digits in 2023, with at least four likely inductees poised to safely win blue districts in November. All in all, progressives are set to claim at least six Congressional seats opened up by redistricting and a record number of retirements.
“I was elected to the House and took office in 1991, and I can tell you there was nothing — nothing — like what we will be seeing in Congress next year,” Sanders said. If that’s the case, it will not only be thanks to the political talents of the candidates themselves, but to the work of groups like Justice Democrats and the Working Families Party (WFP), among the most prominent of the multiplying constellation of organizations devoted to overturning the Democratic establishment. For this faction, the fight is bigger than any one election cycle, whether defined by shock progressive upsets as in 2018 or this year’s handful of undeniably bitter losses. And they measure success as much by the lengths their opponents are going to stop them as by the number of congressional seats they control.
Few would deny the left electoral movement has suffered major setbacks since Sanders’ 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns.
Sanders’ brutal 2020 primary losses — after the Democratic establishment belatedly rallied around Joe Biden — were intertwined with a powerful Republican ground game that torpedoed many progressive campaigns alongside establishment Democrats that November. Sanders ally Nina Turner lost her bid for Ohio’s 11th District seat in 2021, and her campaign failed again nine months later. The Democrats’ 2021 electoral setback was widely spun as a repudiation of the Left.
This year’s primary season also saw painful progressive losses. Despite holding an anti-choice record in a post-Dobbs moment, Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas) narrowly fended off a second primary challenge from immigration lawyer Jessica Cisneros in the 28th District. Progressive first-term Rep. Marie Newman (D-Ill.) fell to centrist Rep. Sean Casten, while Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chair Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.) prevailed over his progressive challenger, state Sen. Alessandra Biaggi, in what Maloney called a win for the “mainstream.” In all, centrist Democrats challenged by progressives ended up winning 14 of 22 primaries this cycle — roughly two-thirds. “The main problem was corporate PAC dark money,” says Alexandra Rojas, executive director of Justice Democrats. “The scale of it,” says Maurice Mitchell, National Director of the WFP, “I can’t overstate.”
The pro-Israel group Democratic Majority for Israel infamously intervened in Turner’s 2021 race, rapidly dissolving her massive polling lead with a blitz of negative advertising that painted the longtime Democrat as insufficiently loyal to the party, part of the pro-Israel lobby’s emerging strategy to make criticism of Israel a congressional nonstarter. After that, the floodgates opened.
By May of this year, Super PACs and outside spending organizations had poured more than $53 million into House Democratic primaries, according to an analysis by Politico. Venture capitalist and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman’s Super PAC dropped more than three-quarters of a million dollars in the last three weeks of the race to defeat Cisneros. Opportunity for All Action Fund, a dark money group run by Democratic operatives, spent more than $125,000 on digital ads and production to successfully stave off gun control activist Kina Collins’ bid to defeat 13-term incumbent Rep. Danny Davis (D-Ill.)
“You could be a great candidate, have a legislative record that shows you can be effective, but money in politics is what kept me and my team up [at night],” says Delia Ramirez, who ran and won the primary for the newly drawn 3rd District in Illinois.
Incumbent Squad members Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Cori Bush (D-Mo.) each faced primary challengers backed by dark money. Billionaire hedge fund manager Dan Loeb and other pro-Israel interests targeted Tlaib; Trump backers and Minnesota business tycoons tried to oust Omar; and Bush faced a flood of attacks from entrepreneur Steven C. Roberts, head of a sprawling business empire who also happens to be the father of Bush’s challenger.
Then there was the cryptocurrency industry, something of a wildcard. Cryptocurrency billionaire Samuel Bankman-Fried, 30, bought nearly $700,000 in TV airtime for ads backing the ultimately victorious insurgent progressive Maxwell Frost in Florida’s 10th, but Crypto PAC Protect Our Future put up $1 million for Turner’s opponent.
“The main attack point was that these candidates were insufficiently loyal to the Democratic Party and Biden,” says Waleed Shahid, communications director for Justice Democrats.
“Strong, Democratic, progressive Black women” were particularly questioned on their credentials, Rojas says. Issues the Right has weaponized — such as defunding the police—were less important as individual attacks than as part of a tapestry of negative messaging telling loyal Democratic voters that insurgents were inexperienced, unserious and out of step with the party, according to those involved in the campaigns. “They tested those attacks early on and poured lots of money to make sure the message they went with was salient enough with a large swath of voters,” Rojas adds.
It’s not just progressives who stand to lose. Former Congresswoman Donna Edwards, too, fell to a hailstorm of money from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), despite her endorsement from both establishment figures like Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi and the Sanders-affiliated Our Revolution.
The dark money spigot won’t shut off anytime soon. In September, the Democratic National Committee blocked a resolution to ban outside spending in primaries.
FULL STEAM
But if the progressive movement is on the ropes, no one’s told its leaders.
“I think it’s been mis-portrayed as a bad year for progressives by the media,” says Greg Casar, a democratic socialist candidate who won his primary for an open House seat in Texas, and who (like other winning candidates) had the crucial backing of groups like WFP and Justice Democrats. “We’ll have a historic number of progressives, true progressives, in Congress.”
According to the Brookings Institution, 50% of all candidates endorsed by Justice for All, Our Revolution, Indivisible, or by Sanders or members of the Squad, won their primaries. Justice Democrats saw three of its five carefully chosen challengers win their primaries, its highest success rate ever. The WFP, meanwhile, saw what it calls its best-ever winning streak, with victories in eight of the 14 non-incumbent House bids it prioritized, a number that doesn’t include incumbent Reps. Omar, Bush and Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.), who won despite stiff challenges. And while the WFP’s overall win rate in House primaries might be lower this year (57% for non-incumbents vs. 77% in 2020), the group is on track for its best year ever in terms of a more important metric: winning seats in Congress. Rob Duffey says the group invested more heavily in federal primaries in blue districts, rather than winning primaries in red seats that are long shots in the general elections.
In a blow to centrist Democrats, WFP endorsee Jamie McLeod-Skinner ousted Rep. Kurt Schrader (D-Ore.), the Blue Dog who led the corporate-backed effort in the House to derail the Build Back Better Act, the omnibus climate and social policy bill that was a priority for progressives. Another WFP candidate, Sanders-endorsed Vermont state Sen. Becca Balint, won her primary against Vermont’s lieutenant governor for Vermont’s only House seat, making her a shoo-in for the seat that, 30 years ago, catapulted Sanders to national prominence.
But four winning primary candidates in particular have excited those involved: Casar (Texas-35th), Ramirez (Ill.-4th), Summer Lee (Pa.-12th) and Maxwell Frost (Fla.-10th)—young, nonwhite and largely working-class candidates with bold progressive platforms. All were backed by the WFP, and Casar and Lee also had support from Justice Democrats. Should they win in November, as expected, their cohort’s entry into Congress would match the size of the original Squad that sent shockwaves through the political landscape in 2018 — something overshadowed by the media’s disproportionate attention to losses.
Those involved in these winning campaigns credit a number of factors in fending off big money. One was starting early, sometimes 14 months before voting.
“It was important to firm up as much support as possible early, so that when lies or mischaracterizations hit, they don’t stick,” says Casar. “And we worked really hard to pay for early polling to show how much broad support we had, which can help keep that right-wing money from coming in.”
A more uncomfortable fact is that some candidates have also neutralized the impact of big money by going centrist on Israel. Casar distanced himself from the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS) in aletter to a local rabbi, affirming his support for continued military aid to Israel as long as it’s not used to violate human rights, while stressing his support for a two-state solution and opposition to Israel’s steadily expanding illegal settlements in the West Bank. The letter was made public by Jewish Insider, and in the ensuing outrage Casar pre-emptively rescinded his request for Austin DSA’s endorsement. Casar’s campaign says that he had been “pressed by many groups” to change his positions on the Middle East and that he “decided to stay true to his own values and write down his thoughts in a letter” instead. But one AIPAC donor remarked that the “Casar race is a very good example of how [our strategy] is working.”
Casar’s not the only one. Frost, a former activist in the Florida Palestine Network, changed his position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict during his campaign — eventually both disavowing BDS and backing military aid to Israel — and alienated key early advisors as a result. Frost told the Intercept, which broke the story, that the evolution “wasn’t really about the spending” but “about the dialogues in district and my conversations with people,” but campaign sources told the outlet the question of outside money and how to keep it out was top of mind. In Pennsylvania, WFP-backed Senate candidate John Fetterman took a similar tack, pledging “unwavering” commitment to Israel, and receiving a DMFI endorsement and spending boost in return.
Another factor was the candidates themselves. “The quality of the candidate matters so much,” says Waleed Shahid. “You can have the math on paper that the demographics and the path to victory are such and such, but if the candidate’s not an authentic messenger or grounded in good values, it’s going to be hard to make that case.”
The candidates’ years of involvement in organizing gave them pre-established public profiles, plus deep connections to local leaders, activists and potential allies — as did their time in elected office. Casar, at 33, was a three-term Austin City Council member who worked as policy director for the Austin-based Workers Defense Project, lobbying for workers’ rights and helping mobile home residents organize against rent hikes and evictions. That work helped him secure the crucial backing of local unions, who mobilized what Texas AFL-CIO President Rick Levy calls “the whole toolkit,” including block-walking, phone calls, joint events and mail to local members.
“The fact that so many unions were engaged there was very unusual,” Levy says.
Illinois state Rep. Delia Ramirez, 39, is a daughter of Guatemalan immigrants who spent her childhood talking with unhoused Chicagoans who gathered at the church soup kitchen her family lived above. She had no plans to run for the new, majority-Latino 3rd District in Illinois until friends and colleagues urged her — including some who put aside their own ambitions. Ramirez says the experiences of her mother, a homecare worker with diabetes, and father, who worked in a bakery for 20 years until a cancer diagnosis forced him to retire, were key to her decision.
“When [Dad] retired, he got a frozen pie — not retirement benefits,” Ramirez says.
Ramirez came up through Illinois progressive political networks as the campaign manager for progressive watchdog Common Cause Illinois and, later, co-chair of the Elected Officials Chapter of United Working Families, the Illinois WFP affiliate. “We were with Greg [Casar] from day one, and that’s true with Delia as well,” says Mitchell. “This is a story about leadership development and candidate pipelines.”
State Rep. Summer Lee, 34, one of four candidates backed by the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) to enter the Pennsylvania state House in 2018, has said she only ran for office because she saw it as an “organizing opportunity.” Having worked as an organizer for a $15 minimum wage, she brought her activist roots to the statehouse, joining protests that erupted after the 2019 acquittal of a Pittsburgh cop who killed an unarmed Black teenager, and giving a famously critical keynote address to a 2020 Women’s March gathering. “I hope that you will get up, that you will take your pink pussy hat off,” Summer told the Vermont crowd, “and go up to your sister of color and tell her that, ‘I am here. What do you need?’ ”
Lee’s organizing roots and legislative record on labor rights also won her the support of three large SEIU locals and the United Electrical Workers union.
Maxwell Frost, who rounds out the group, worked on the Florida ACLU’s successful felon re-enfranchisement campaign and was national organizing director for the gun control group started by Parkland shooting survivors. At 25, Maxwell stands to be the youngest member of Congress, a Generation Z Uber driver shaped by the era-defining anxieties around climate, economic precarity and gun violence.
Frost, too, says he had no plans to run until prodded by local organizers. A month before he announced, he connected by phone with the mother he’d been separated from at birth, who he learned had spent her life “in a cycle of poverty.” “She never had healthcare, she wasn’t in a financial position to have another child,” Frost says. “I was number eight, which is why she put me up for adoption. Hearing that from her really changed everything for me.”
Apart from Frost, each candidate climbed the ladder of elected office starting at the local or state levels. Their impressive legislative records were “undeniably a benefit,” Mitchell says. “There’s an advantage of demonstrating, as a progressive, that you know how to run and win, that it leads to concrete victories for working people they can feel and see in their lives.” Typical centrist attack lines about pie-in-the-sky ideas that can never come to pass “ring hollow when your constituents have seen you govern,” Mitchell adds.
On the Austin City Council, Casar pushed through affordable housing measures and a 60-day eviction moratorium at the start of the pandemic. Even his legislative defeats helped burnish his public standing, as when he ended up the lone council vote against restoring the city’s ban on homeless camping, or when his measure mandating paid sick leave for workers was struck down by the state Supreme Court.
In Illinois, Ramirez authored an emergency housing assistance bill, signed into law in May 2021, that temporarily stayed some foreclosures and allocated money for struggling renters and homeowners during the pandemic.
Lee, who had to work within a long GOP-controlled Pennsylvania legislature, drew on her activist roots to jumpstart action on police reform during the 2020 George Floyd protests, leading the effort to commandeer the House podium at the start of voting. She successfully forced foot-dragging Republican leadership to move, and she did so with more establishment-friendly Democrats. The result was a state law creating a landmark (if flawed) misconduct database for police hires.
These records made charges of party disloyalty a tough sell. “To accuse them of being Republicans didn’t really work,” Shahid says. Their legislation had been publicized as victories by local Democratic branches in party press releases, such as the paid sick leave ordinance passed by
Casar, who calls himself “a proud member” of the Democratic Party. When Ramirez spearheaded the codification of abortion rights in Illinois in 2019 and successfully passed a provision—inserted at the end of a 465-page budget bill in 2020 — to expand Medicaid to undocumented immigrants, Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker touted both as major accomplishments.
This history was especially useful given the timing of this round of primaries, which happened to land in the period of Democratic despondency between the death of Build Back Better and the August passage of the Inflation Reduction Act.
“We stressed that we are the people who really want to deliver on the Democratic agenda that’s been promised,” says Rob Duffey, WFP national communications director. For candidates without a large legislative record, like Kina Collins, that timing may have hurt. She fell in a low-turnout election in Chicago, where doorknockers in typically blue-voting African-American neighborhoods met voters complaining the president wasn’t doing anything for them, Alexandra Rojas says.
Through it all, the winning campaigns continued the strategies progressive challengers have become known for, namely the blister-inducing doorknocking and phonebanking that’s been the bedrock of left-wing upsets going back to Sanders’ first mayoral victory in 1981. Central as these tactics are, however, they’re clearly no longer enough.
“That can’t make up for the imbalance in paid communications,” Shahid says. “Our adversaries are spending six, seven figures on mailers and ads, and we can’t abandon that terrain to them. For older voters, it’s the main way they get information.”
One clear trend is that progressive candidates who are outspent 2-to-1 can win, while those with steeper ratios aren’t as lucky. “When our candidates were outspent to that level, our opponents could shape the narrative in ways that became overwhelming for us to reshape, even with all the advantages we had,” Mitchell says. WFP-backed Durham County Commissioner Nida Allam was outspent 14-to-1 and lost her bid for North Carolina’s 4th District.
Lee saw a 25-point lead wither in only a month to less than 1% under a blizzard of dark money-financed negative advertising. But Justice Democrats and others were able to put together their own resources to stay within that 2-to-1 ratio and help Lee eke out a win.
“Summer’s race was one we knew we could win, but it required us to go all in,” says Rojas. “After that, we didn’t have the money to spend in the same way on others.” In the end, Justice Democrats and other outside groups came up with $1.7 million to offset the nearly $3 million spent against Lee. Only $22,000 separated Ramirez and the runner-up in her race, while Casar faced no serious outside spending in his four-way primary. Frost, as a dark horse political novice, did not draw much resistance in his race — but as time has proven, such out-of-nowhere upsets hardly make for reliable left-wing victories.
“A big part of what I’m thinking about is what I can do between now and the next cycle to build that war chest,” Rojas says. “In the same way that progressives care about organizing people, we have to start caring about organizing money.”
That predicament may require finding progressive counterparts to legendary establishment fundraisers like Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Rojas says endorsements from Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez were “incredibly impactful” for this year’s challengers, providing a fundraising boost and local media attention, which brought volunteers and resources.
“They’re a big part of this question,” Rojas says.
As counterintuitive as it seems, the groups challenging the corporate establishment view the flood of dark money as a marker of success.
“Their money is a response to our victories,” Mitchell says. “They wouldn’t be spending this much if our strategies weren’t working, or on candidates who have no path to victory.”
These victories defied a number of pernicious narratives. Republicans have claimed since 2020, with some evidence, that Latino voters are a conservative constituency drifting steadily away from the Democratic Party. Yet Casar and Ramirez won big in majority Latino districts running on unabashedly progressive platforms.
Casar, in March, romped to victory over his three opponents with more than 60% of the vote. Ramirez trounced her nearest rival, a two-term alderman who racked up major endorsements, by more than 40 points; her undocumented husband wasn’t even able to vote.
“Latinos are overwhelmingly working class in Texas,” Casar says. “We need to make sure we don’t just say we’re the party of the working class, but show we are.” Casar is the son of a doctor and grew up in an affluent neighborhood, but spent his pre-political career and time in elected office waging high-profile fights for working-class issues.
“I want to continue to be an organizer inside Congress,” Casar says. “My goal is to be the most pro-labor congressperson from the South.”
Despite a bipartisan effort to turn “defund the police” and reform efforts into a political liability — partly based on the claim that minority voters are most concerned with law and order — Casar, Ramirez, Frost and Lee all backed Black Lives Matter protests (Frost was arrested) or even supported the defunding demand.
“Defund the police, socialism — all those big slogans have come up on the campaign trail,” Rojas says. The difference, she says, was the candidates’ long-term approach to politics that saw them campaign for 12 to 14 months and spend even longer organizing and building public profiles, giving them the public trust and infrastructure to weather such attacks.
“The tactic that all of our candidates have taken is to bring together broad coalitions by going out, knocking on doors, meeting people, having honest conversations,” Rojas says, whether about Medicare for All, about what “defunding” really entails, or what democratic socialism actually means.
More than anything, this round of successful insurgencies proves — if the Midwest victories of Tlaib, Omar and Bush hadn’t already — that the Left has a constituency broader than what the establishment claims. “There’s a neoliberal narrative that benefits the opposition that suggests progressives can only win in coastal urban centers,” Mitchell says. “But what we know is that a progressive, pro-people platform is attractive to people of all persuasions.”
THE LONG DETOUR
Even a 10-member Squad will be a tiny minority in a Democratic caucus made up of hundreds of congresspeople, let alone the full 435-member House. And there’s every likelihood the House will be GOP controlled in 2023. While those involved caution it’s early, discussions about the road ahead have already begun, starting with staffing and connecting incoming members to the existing Squad so “we can start working together as early as possible,” Rojas says.
Groups like the WFP and Justice Democrats don’t merely come to the aid of challengers when they run for federal office, but are part of a network of outside groups working with and supporting them through their time in office, a fact particularly instrumental in a House with a narrow majority.
Summer Lee, 34, running for Pennsylvania’s 12th District House seat, has garnered support from the Working Families Party and Justice Democrats.
For an electoral Left that is still maturing, “the next frontier is learning how to wield our leverage and power inside the halls of Congress and other legislative bodies,” Shahid says. “If these members of Congress have a clear organizing program on the inside and the outside, they can really make a difference, because the margins will probably be slim.”
But maybe they won’t have to settle for pure defense.
“No matter what, we’ll still have a Democratic president,” Casar notes, pointing to the sometimes confrontational public advocacy from progressives like Bush and Ocasio-Cortez that led to executive orders extending the eviction pause and canceling some student debt. “I’ve been starting to have discussions about how to work to grow the labor movement or bring abortion care to states like Texas through executive action,” Casar says.
Meanwhile, progressives will keep their eyes on the long game, continuing to grow their numbers in Congress, building out the progressive bench that will feed future Squad expansions, and putting the pieces in place for the next Democratic majority.
“Many of the candidates we’ve elected are in their 30s — or 20s, in the case of Maxwell,” Duffey says. “They’ll be in their seats for a decade, probably. Even if they’re not in the majority next year, there will be a future majority.”
Ramirez agrees: “We have to prepare ourselves strategically to move the needle, to get the folks we need at the table, to get sponsors for bills, so that when we regain the majority, we’ll be ready.”
I know Eskamani and Frost will win. If Demings, who is a pure moderate, can pull off the upset; man, will my chest quietly puff out. It has been a political desert down here for futurists like me. I’m already preparing to volunteer to go after DeSh##a## when he runs for POTUS. I don’t care if I’m 100. As long as that grey organ between my ears works, I am set! ✊🗽☮️✊
The roots created by the 50-state-strategy, and early clever fundraising on the innertubz, which I’ve been howling about for years, are growing and this read proves it! Frost got both early votes in this casa! 👍👍☮️🗽 Proud to do it, too. ✊
Thank you, jcb, for this read. Big “In These Times” fan, here. I gotta point out something else. When the Powell Memo FRightwingnuts started their march to power back around 1965, they were laughed at. That did NOT deter them. They focused on their goals long-term, were patient, and kept going. The same formula works for our side. Only problem is time….climate crisis waits for no one. 😞
orlbucfan
T and R x 2, jcb!! ☮️🙂👍 Happy Halloween, too!🎃🙂🎃🙂🎃 Hope you’re enjoying decent 🎃 weather. It is hot down here. 😳
A razão da minha vitória foi a dedicação de cada um de vocês. Que acreditaram na liberdade e na possibilidade de recuperarmos o país para o povo brasileiro.
The reason for my victory was the dedication of each of you. Who believed in freedom and in the possibility of recovering the country for the Brazilian people.
Conversei hoje por telefone com o presidente dos Estados Unidos, @JoeBiden. Falamos sobre o fortalecimento da democracia no Brasil, a preservação do meio ambiente e a nossa vontade de ampliarmos a cooperação entre os nossos países 🇧🇷🇺🇸
I spoke today by phone with the President of the United States, @JoeBiden . We talked about strengthening democracy in Brazil, preserving the environment and our desire to expand cooperation between our countries
No. I will apologize to no one for helping to pass the American Rescue Plan The problem is not that the working class got a $1,400 check 19 months ago. The problem is corporate greed, outrageously high prices and corporate profits that are at a 70-year high.
So many corrupt business took money that they didnt use for what it was intended for-their employees, that was the real problem. These owners kept it for thier own greed.
Dude, the problem is not that wages are too high & unemployment is too low or that the working class got a $1,400 check 19 months ago. The problem is that corporations are making record profits by jacking up prices & spending a record $1.1 trillion buying back their own stock. https://t.co/HpirgmEGAF
Well, well, well, you mean there’s no GOPuke red tsunami in Texas?? Really? According to the craporate media, it’s everywhere. Sure it is. How about running some real democrats for a change? Huh? No way? F@@@ you and the slime mold you slithered in on, PTBs!
wpDiscuz
If only these yahoos would have listened sooner.
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This contains some levity.
🎼🙂 I did my 🎼🎃 yesterday with Stevie Wonder’s “Superstition.”👍
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Glad they’re getting the word out!
That’s the most apt description for AIPAC, DFMI and that ilk. Apartheid menace.
https://www.texastribune.org/2022/10/30/texas-bernie-sanders-rio-grande-valley/
Moved
Moved
I read Gonzales’ seat is no longer safe, but I think the GOP think there is going to be a tsunami.
Yeah, De La Cruz needs to team up with Rubio. He better keep his eye on Demings. She’s out raising him $$$ plus he can’t slam her for being anti-crime. Former police chief? The only obstacle is statewide voter recognition. I’m very, very, very cautiously optimistic. Been disappointed by this stupid corrupt cesspool of a state for years. Mailing out my final stack of GOTV postcards. Hey, it helps.🗽☮️👍
Wasn’t Il Duce campaigning for Rubio last night?
You mean the orange turd himself? I ignore it and merde like them.
Excellent long article on potential new Squad members
https://inthesetimes.com/article/progressives-dark-money-midterms-squad-democrats
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I know Eskamani and Frost will win. If Demings, who is a pure moderate, can pull off the upset; man, will my chest quietly puff out. It has been a political desert down here for futurists like me. I’m already preparing to volunteer to go after DeSh##a## when he runs for POTUS. I don’t care if I’m 100. As long as that grey organ between my ears works, I am set! ✊🗽☮️✊
The roots created by the 50-state-strategy, and early clever fundraising on the innertubz, which I’ve been howling about for years, are growing and this read proves it! Frost got both early votes in this casa! 👍👍☮️🗽 Proud to do it, too. ✊
Thank you, jcb, for this read. Big “In These Times” fan, here. I gotta point out something else. When the Powell Memo FRightwingnuts started their march to power back around 1965, they were laughed at. That did NOT deter them. They focused on their goals long-term, were patient, and kept going. The same formula works for our side. Only problem is time….climate crisis waits for no one. 😞
T and R x 2, jcb!! ☮️🙂👍 Happy Halloween, too!🎃🙂🎃🙂🎃 Hope you’re enjoying decent 🎃 weather. It is hot down here. 😳
Translation for those who don’t read Portuguese
The reason for my victory was the dedication of each of you. Who believed in freedom and in the possibility of recovering the country for the Brazilian people.
Translation:
I am so envious of you, Brazil. Here’s my hope for the stupid, backwards, craporate fascists wrecking my country.
Voting ends a week from today. Please let Lula be a sign for us, too.
maybe he can slow down the destruction of the Amazon? The previous idiot increased it in the name of greed..
So many corrupt business took money that they didnt use for what it was intended for-their employees, that was the real problem. These owners kept it for thier own greed.
Too little too late to send out this message. Bernie warned the WH over 2 months ago.
Keep dreaming Byedone, you already know the big oil bought off the congresscritters long ago.
I see Faiz is with him.
That’s some serious good eating and drinking. 🙂
I’m still unaccustomed to Bernie eating pork. I noticed Faiz did not.
Tex-Mex has plenty of great dishes w/chicken and veggies. Plus seafood. The Latinos know how to cook. 🙂
I grew up with tex mex with chicken and hamburger beef. It was years later before I ate carnitas and cabrito.
It’s no wonder Harvard was ready to toss Summers out.
Classic example of a Swiftian yahoo. 🙁
Happy Halloween from Myrna, Joan, and Shirley!
Not a Nancy Pelosi fan but smdh.
I dont condone violence towards anyone even the Pelousy’s. Its a step towards fascism as intimidation and or murder are their main tools.
Well said, Wi64.
Amen x 27!
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Well, well, well, you mean there’s no GOPuke red tsunami in Texas?? Really? According to the craporate media, it’s everywhere. Sure it is. How about running some real democrats for a change? Huh? No way? F@@@ you and the slime mold you slithered in on, PTBs!
well, there’s greg cesar and Michelle Valljo.
True dat, Ms. Benny. Hopefully, both and Beto will win. THAT would put a serious crimp in the Powell Memo FRightnuts’ sails.