Progressives are pushing back against claims from fellow Democrats that the party saw losses up and down the ballot as a result of leaning too far into “culture wars.”
With a looming Republican trifecta on the horizon, some Democrats have resorted to a blame game while others are taking time after the 2024 election to reflect on what went wrong and how they can appeal to voters in the future.
Some, like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), argued the losses stemmed from the Democratic Party “abandoning” working-class people. Others, like Rep. Seth Moulton (D-MA), said Democrats are out of touch because they are “more concerned about offending people” than talking about important policy issues.
President-elect Donald Trump and his allies spent $123 million on a wave of TV ads referencing transgender issues, including biological males playing in girls sports, according to ad-tracking firm AdImpact. The final message in the homestretch of the campaign was Vice President Kamala Harris was too radical with her past support for taxpayer-funded surgery for transgender inmates with the tagline “Kamala’s For They/Them. President Trump is for you.”
When asked how progressives should respond to culture war blowback, Rep.-elect Sarah McBride (D-DE) said Democrats across the board should be taking a moment to reflect.
“This is a moment for soul searching, and there should be humility across the Democratic Party, regardless of where you fall ideologically, regardless of what your priors are, I think we should take a beat,” McBride said during a press conference announcing the newest Progressive Caucus members on Monday.
“Let’s be clear: The party that was focused on culture wars, the party that was focused on trans people, was the Republican Party,” McBride added. “It was Donald Trump. It was the $100 million, $200 million that they spent on television ads.”
McBride, who made history as the first transgender member of Congress after Election Day, didn’t run explicitly on identity but said it was not a secret.
“I think what we have to all recognize here is that when a politician tries to take an issue that impacts a handful of people in a handful of states and turn it into the most important issue in an election, everyone has to ask why?” McBride said. “And the answer to that question is that Donald Trump was trying to divide and distract from the fact that he has absolutely no policy solutions for the issues that are actually keeping voters up at night, the issues that I was hearing about on the campaign trail.”
McBride joined Reps.-elect Nellie Pou (D-NJ), Laura Friedman (D-CA), Yassamin Ansari (D-AZ), and Lateefah Simon (D-CA) outside the Capitol to be welcomed as new members of the Progressive Caucus by Chairwoman Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) and Whip Greg Casar (D-TX).
Jayapal led the press conference acknowledging that the outcome of the 2024 election was disappointing for many, with Trump poised for a second term, Republicans flipping the Senate, and the GOP on track to maintain a razor-thin House majority.
But, Jayapal said, the losses will help the caucus “recalibrate” and “rebuild,” adding that the addition of new Democrats is evidence that “progressive power, despite everything that we are dealing with, is still growing.”
With exit polling showing a dramatic drop in Democratic voter turnout compared to 2020, Jayapal said she is “not interested in blame” but thinks the Democratic Party does need to rebuild and address why people chose to vote down the ballot and neglect the presidential election.
“There’s a level of anger that I think that this election really brought out,” the chairwoman said. “And as much as it was wonderful for many of us to think about joy and love and beautiful things that we in the Progressive Caucus really love to think about, as well, the reality is, we also have to channel a lot of the anger that’s out there about the fact that people don’t have a fair shot anymore.”
Casar blamed the “right-wing propaganda machine” for losses, arguing the Democratic Party needs to “very clearly” show it is the party of working-class people.
“We should not abandon being the party of civil rights. We should be standing up for the rights of every single person as Rep.-elect McBride just laid out, but that’s what people need to hear from us first,” Casar said during the conference of where Democrats need to go from here.
Casar later told reporters that Democrats need to “break through the noise” and be willing to take risks.
“What Republicans did was they tried to speak to people’s economic anxieties and then they blamed the vulnerable for it,” Casar said. “What Democrats need to do is speak to people’s economic anxieties and then blame the real villains for it.”
With several races still too close to call, control of the House remains in play but leaning toward Republicans. However, with rumors and confirmations that some House GOP lawmakers may transition to Trump’s Cabinet, and with some key flips by Democrats in New York, the House Republican majority will likely be as small or smaller than the one it currently holds.
Much of the 118th Congress centered on GOP infighting, whether with government spending, foreign aid, or ousting speakers. Even some Republicans, famously Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX), would bash their fellow conservatives that the level of unproductivity in the House left them with very little to campaign on in their districts.
Democrats helped bail out Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) on more than one occasion this term, including various continuing resolutions and foreign aid supplementals to Israel, Ukraine, and Taiwan. But, that might be the last of support Republicans see for a while should there be an official GOP trifecta.
“We had this situation where we had Democrats in the minority in the House who felt it incumbent upon us — we can debate whether or not that was the right thing or not — to fix Republicans lack of being able to govern, instead of letting it show through that they couldn’t govern time after time after time,” Jayapal said, adding that Democrats did so thanks to a blue White House and Senate.
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“I don’t know that in this Congress, with a Republican trifecta, that you’re going to see that same desire. … Voters voted for them. Let’s see what they do,” the Progressive Caucus chairwoman continued.
McBride said to the Washington Examiner that being a new member of the House comes with “a great degree of humility” and that it would be “premature” to strategize on finding bipartisanship and helping Republicans push legislation over the finish line.
