Progressives sending a posse of Democrats to the U.S. Senate in January have a message for Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY): Join us or get out of our way.
Leaders from top progressive groups spoke out Thursday against the Democratic Party’s presumptive majority leader for a centrist stance that saw Schumer recently claim he’d work with Donald Trump, should the president be willing to change his ways.
“We have to work to end the corruption that is poisoning our politics and our economy,” Jenifer Fernandez-Ancona, chief strategy officer of Way to Win, said Thursday.
“You can’t run against a rigged system in November then compromise with the people who rigged it.”
Adam Green, co-founder of Progressive Change Campaign Coalition, called out the ranking Democrat by name.
“It’s a matter of leveraging the awesome people who just got elected and the fresh mandate they have to force Chuck Schumer to think bigger,” said Green.
“We’re still moving, but he’s holding us back — and we need some cultural things to get him into shape.”
Schumer, an establishment Democrat who often garners criticism for party-bucking compromises, will likely be elected in January to lead a host of senators with decidedly different perspectives on politics.
Democrats who flipped their states on an economic populist platform include Troy Jackson in Maine, James Talarico in Texas, Adam Hamilton in Kansas, Roy Cooper in North Carolina and Josh Turek in Iowa.
They’ll be joined by progressive Peggy Flanagan in Minnesota, and at least 12 Democrat colleagues who ran on an affordability policy platform that focused on corruption at the top.
It was a gambit that worked, argued Fernandez-Ancona.
"The lesson isn’t that Democrats need to abandon vulnerable people to win," she said. "It’s that we need to stop fighting elections on Republican terms."
Data backs her claim.
Populist Democrats who campaigned on fighting corruption and improving workers’ pay saw a 9-point gain on the generic message of protecting the Constitution and supporting economic growth, according to a recent poll conducted by Data for Progress.
Executive Director Ryan O’Donnell added that nearly 30 percent of swing voters said they’d vote for Democrats who supported taxing the rich — 24 percent said they’d go blue for a Medicare for All healthcare system.
Joel Payne, of MoveOn Political Action, argued Thursday that American voters sent a clear mandate to Washington to deliver funding to the Affordable Care Act and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, and to end the war in Iran driving up gas prices.
Should Democrats hope to reclaim the White House in 2028, argued Payne, they’ll need to deliver results on the promises they made — and he pointed to past election cycles as proof.
“There was a crisis of trust in the grassroots of our party —people felt like they were sending leaders to Washington with a clear mandate and they were passing on doing the things,” Payne said.
“Right now is the moment where folks want action and want leaders and leadership to be action-oriented. A good way to burn off the trust that you built on Election Day is to half-step and to back down.”
Green, of the Progressive Change Campaign Coalition, argued that while incoming Democrats don’t have the votes to block Schumer’s appointment as majority leader, they still have the power to deliver results to the people.
How? By taking aim at the filibuster.
Roughly 40 Democrats and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) would likely throw their support behind fighting the filibuster — a Senate tactic that lets a minority of senators block or delay a vote on legislation by keeping debate going and preventing a bill from moving to a final vote — because of the gain it would win them.
It would prevent a minority of Republicans from blocking Democratic bills from moving to a vote.
“Getting rid of the filibuster gives us a clean story for the American public, as clean as Abdul El-Sayed, during the campaign trail, saying, ‘Money in your pocket, money out of politics, Medicare for all,’” argued Green.
"When the House passes a minimum wage bill, is the story that the American people get going to be, “Minimum wage bill goes to Donald Trump’s desk and he either signs or vetoes it?” Or is it that we’re going to be talking about the Byrd Rule?"
What's more, while Schumer might refuse to go along, such a demand would put him in a tight spot, Green argued.
"If there is any chance of having oxygen in the room for a new Democratic leader, it is if someone broaches the question of filibuster reform and Chuck Schumer says no," Green said. "That immediately puts 40 Democrats and Sanders against him."