After a Year of Fumbles, Congressional Progressive Caucus Must Chart a New Path

In October 2022, a gaggle of left-leaning lawmakers launched a letter urging President Biden to hunt a diplomatic decision to the Ukraine Warfare. Whereas fellow Democrats have typically tempered their criticism of Biden’s coverage in the direction of Ukraine, the letter was unusually strident in its tone and forthright in its suggestions. “As legislators liable for the expenditure of tens of billions of U.S. taxpayer {dollars} in navy help within the battle, we imagine such involvement on this warfare … creates a accountability for america to significantly discover all potential avenues, together with direct engagement with Russia,” the authors wrote. The letter was signed by round 30 of essentially the most distinguished members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC), a formation of about 100 members of Congress.

The backlash to the missive was speedy. Commentators and different lawmakers throughout the political spectrum decried the tone and content material of the letter. Only a day after the unique textual content was launched, CPC Chair Pramila Jayapal posted a retraction of the letter to the caucus’s personal site. By that time, quite a few signatories to the letter had publicly distanced themselves from its content material and questioned the choice to launch textual content that had apparently been drafted months earlier than.

The Ukraine letter brouhaha kicked off a run of embarrassing occasions for the CPC and distinguished caucus members. In Could of this yr, the CPC emerged within the media as a serious participant within the debt ceiling negotiations. It was reported then that progressives in Congress, sad about work necessities for assist applications inserted by Republicans into the debt ceiling settlement, have been contemplating voting towards the package deal. Some took a fair more durable line, encouraging President Biden to invoke the 14th Amendment to avert default, thereby bypassing the necessity to cut price with Republicans solely. However, because the vote approached, the CPC and fellow vacationers fractured, with some breaking in favor of the compromise laws whereas others held agency to their “no” votes. Some members of the CPC even famous that their dedication to a no vote was comfortable, and subject to change if the margins for passage of the invoice appeared too tight. The ultimate invoice contained just about no wins for progressives, whereas centrist Democrats and Republicans each walked away with a sequence of concessions.

The disarray on the debt ceiling negotiations mirrored progressives’ previous attempt to flex their bloc’s muscle when, in late 2021, they threatened to withhold their votes on a bipartisan infrastructure invoice except its passage was paired with a dedication to additionally cross the Construct Again Higher invoice, which contained much more progressive priorities than did the infrastructure invoice. That standoff failed catastrophically for progressives, as mounting stress from the White Home and average Democrats drove the CPC to relent and vote independently on the infrastructure invoice. Construct Again Higher finally didn’t safe sufficient assist from Senate Democrats to cross.

Extra lately, CPC Chair Jayapal was smeared with expenses of antisemitism when she referred to Israel as a “racist state” in response to pro-Palestinian protesters on the Netroots Nation convention, a convening of progressive organizations. She subsequently clarified her place, however not earlier than Republicans and average Democrats pushed through a decision at lightning velocity affirming the U.S. Congress’s assist for Israel. Jayapal, together with all however 9 Democrats, voted for the decision. In the meantime, regardless of polling indicating that Democrats’ attitudes about Palestinians are altering quickly, the CPC has not known as for the same decision on Palestinian human rights. And, additional complicating CPC’s place because the putative vanguard for progressive overseas coverage in Congress, Consultant Ro Khanna lately made waves by inviting India’s far proper President Narendra Modi on his first state go to to Washington.

Taken collectively, these incidents have put the CPC on its again leg because it defends towards expenses of antisemitism from the correct and appeasement from the left. This has been a doubly disappointing yr for progressive observers exterior of Congress who harbored hope that this Congress’s CPC can be among the many most militant because the caucus’s founding within the Nineties. As extra progressives have gained elections over the previous couple of cycles, particularly to Home seats, many have assumed that congressional progressives would be capable of throw their weight round extra successfully.

The irony of the CPC’s defensive posture, although, is that lots of the coverage priorities which can be core to its id at the moment are touted (in a compromised type) by the Biden administration as its largest accomplishments within the president’s first time period, particularly these handed into regulation in final yr’s Inflation Discount Act (IRA). Though it’s removed from ideally suited progressive coverage making, as some have claimed, the IRA does embrace main local weather investments that have already hastened a rise in inexperienced jobs creation and a discount, albeit modest, in greenhouse gasoline emissions. The invoice additionally gave Medicare the authority to barter the costs of some pharmaceuticals (although the outcomes of negotiations gained’t go into impact till 2026), an enormously popular concept among the many American public, and one which tacitly endorses the notion that the federal authorities ought to play extra of a job in regulating well being care bills. Local weather motion and well being care affordability have lengthy been staples of the CPC’s platform, and lots of the measures included within the IRA are descendants of those who progressives initially fought for within the finally doomed Construct Again Higher Act.

Whereas some have argued that the CPC ought to undertake extra obstructionist ways, like these employed by the Freedom Caucus towards Republican management or those who Joe Manchin and now-independent Kyrsten Sinema have used to stymie Democrats’ coverage making, it’s unlikely that progressives within the Home have nice sufficient numbers to credibly threaten the passage of laws. Within the debt ceiling combat earlier this yr, for instance, solely 38 of the CPC’s 103 members voted against the “compromise” settlement. Past the Home, right-wing senators like Manchin, along with his specific penchant for intransigence, have created, a minimum of within the brief time period, a largely insurmountable roadblock to passing essentially the most progressive laws being mentioned in Congress.

So, whereas the CPC doesn’t have sufficient inside caucus self-discipline to demand backroom offers or else, that doesn’t imply its management ought to enable assaults on progressive members to pressure the CPC to retreat from vocally and publicly endorsing its coverage prescriptions. Creating more renewable energy and ensuring health care coverage for all Individuals are each very talked-about with voters. (One other CPC precedence, scholar debt cancellation, was among the many most popular of Biden’s coverage achievements amongst youthful voters till it was struck down by the Supreme Courtroom in June of this yr.)

Additional, the CPC ought to take its case for progressive coverage making to the general public much more typically than it presently does. Bernie Sanders’s two presidential campaigns confirmed the ability of turning progressive coverage into pronouncements that many Individuals agree with. Progressives shouldn’t be cowed into accepting a backseat function in Congress, regardless of this current sequence of setbacks. Slightly, they need to sharpen their critiques, even when that typically means constructive criticism of the Biden administration. And, progressives in Congress must grow to be extra sturdy about absorbing criticism, and even assaults, from the media and their very own social gathering. The letter progressives wrote to President Biden on Ukraine is a well-researched doc that was most likely the results of many hours of debate amongst CPC members and their staffs. They need to have stood by voicing their issues concerning the “danger of catastrophic escalation” and opposition to never-ending navy assist. That opposition, by the way in which, aligns the CPC with the majority of Americans polled lately on this query. To shore up assist for his or her coverage proposals and critiques of enterprise as ordinary, the CPC also needs to try to develop a extra coherent id as a caucus that’s translatable to these exterior of the Beltway, whose every day life doesn’t embrace maintaining with Congressional affairs.

And lastly, progressives in Congress shouldn’t be troubled about arguments that their critiques damage Biden’s reelection possibilities. In actual fact, by forcing left-of-center concepts to the highest of the Democrats’ agenda, the CPC and its allies present a north star for coverage making that, when realized, truly helps Democrats win consequential elections. Maybe, if the remainder of the Democratic caucus was dedicated to those priorities, the social gathering might start to win back lots of the working-class voters it would definitely must win in future cycles.