In a CNN interview airing today, anchor Chris Cuomo pressed Joe Biden, the presidential front-runner under siege from the Left, on the vocal progressive push in the Democratic Party.
“Look who won last time out,” Biden said. “By the way, I think [Alexandria] Ocasio-Cortez is a brilliant, bright woman, but she won a primary. In the general election fights, who won? Mainstream Democrats who are very progressive on social issues and very strong on education and healthcare.”
What Biden didn’t say here is the most significant part: The Democrats who flipped seats from GOP to Democrat don’t embrace socialist economics.
Although the freshman congresswoman and her socialist ilk have dominated the airwaves, Biden is absolutely correct. To paraphrase a certain House speaker who’s decried the progressive wing as “like, five people,” in districts like Ocasio-Cortez’s Bronx or Ilhan Omar’s Minneapolis, a glass of water marked with a “D” would beat any Republican every time. Far harder is flipping the suburbs that delivered Democrats the House of Representatives in 2018.
For all the magazine covers and prime time dominated by AOC and the “squad,” 22 freshman Democrats elected in 2018 who won Republican leaning districts came from the moderately liberal New Democrat Coalition. While moderates won the overwhelming majority of seats flipped by Democrats, progressives failed to flip any truly red territory.
And Biden is correct to call out AOC specifically, as she was in the minority of candidates endorsed by progressive groups to win her primary. Candidates endorsed by Our Revolution, created by fellow presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders, won just 37% of their primaries, and those endorsed by the equally left-wing Justice Democrats won 31% of their primaries. To the contrary, the PAC for the New Democrats had an 86% win rate. Progressives may comprise 40% of House Democrats, but moderates in the New Democrat and Blue Dog Coalitions still narrowly hold a majority. Most importantly, New Democrats dominate the party’s freshman House class, more than doubling the number of progressives elected last year.
For all the attention given to progressives, their agenda remains widely unpopular with the public. Just a quarter of the country supports legal abortion under any circumstances, up until the point of birth, as endorsed by the majority of the 2020 presidential field and progressives. Fewer than four in ten Americans support granting “Medicare For all” to illegal immigrants or a “Medicare For all” plan that would abolish private health insurance, also backed by the bulk of presidential hopefuls and progressives. And despite the Democratic opposition to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, the number of Americans who believe the wealthy and corporations pay too little in taxes has remained virtually unchanged from the Obama years.
Deep blue electorates may send socialists to Washington, but Biden isn’t wrong that it’s the moderates who catapulted Democrats into the House majority in 2018.
