Congressional Democrats are undergoing big-time soul searching after getting shellacked in the midterm elections. But cracks in the caucus’ unity are showing — and possibly growing — as the party struggles to pull itself together ahead of the 2016 elections.
Debates between liberal and “Wall Street” wings, tensions among leadership and rank-and-file members, and the increasing clout of populists in the party pose challenges for Democrats as they work to build a cohesive message and brand identity.
“There are seeds of discontent that have been sown in the Democratic Party, and those might start to grow in the next couple of years,” said Nathan Gonzales, deputy editor of the Rothenberg Political Report.
Jim Manley, a Democratic strategist and senior director at QGA Public Affairs, added that Democrats must recalibrate for the 2016 elections.
“Look, there is no sugar-coating the fact that we, as Democrats, took a beating during the last election,” he said. “And it wasn’t just in the Senate races, either, as we suffered big losses at the state and local level as well.
“So we, as a party, are going to have to take a step back for a bit, figure out what went wrong — and right — and then move forward.”
Rep. Jim Himes’ candidacy for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chairmanship sparked an internal debate about whether it was wise for the party to elevate a “Wall Street insider” to a coveted position responsible for fundraising and recruiting House candidates.
Liberal outside groups actively campaigned against Himes, a former Goldman Sachs executive, saying that naming him chairman would send the wrong message to voters and could discourage liberals from running for Congress.
When House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi instead this week named Rep. Ben Ray Luján of New Mexico as DCCC chairman, the influential Progressive Change Campaign Committee rejoiced, saying that a Himes chairmanship “would have been disastrous for progressives and hurt Democrats’ chances of winning back the majority in 2016.”
“We thank Leader Pelosi for not selecting Jim Himes to lead the DCCC, thereby rejecting the Wall Street wing of the Democratic Party,” said PCCC co-founder Adam Green.
Green said in order for Democrats to make a serious move to win back control of the House, the party must run on “big, bold, populist ideas.
“This means recruiting economic populist candidates — especially in red and purple states — and working with them to integrate a populist vision into their campaign messaging,” he said.
Himes said his Wall Street background likely doomed his run to head the DCCC.
It’s “disappointing because I think the criticism is way off-base,” said Himes as reported this week in the Connecticut Post. “This is an industry, like every other industry, that needs to be well-regulated, but plays a critical role in our economy. That’s sometimes a hard case to make.”
Gonzales said it’s unclear whether Pelosi picked Luján specifically as a repudiation of the party’s centrist/Wall Street faction, as the New Mexican, who is Latino, offers valued attributes as DCCC head. But the negative reaction by many Democrats to Himes, he said, highlights an ongoing power struggle between the populist and Wall Street wings the party must address.
“That’s the largest disconnect right now” in the Democratic Party, he said.
The anti-Wall Street faction is poised to play a role in deciding the Democratic Party’s 2016 presidential nominee, as many are ready to support Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts should she decide to run, as is whispered.
“She is a United States senator, but that has not been her life,” Gonzales said. “She has those [establishment] credentials, but she’s also not a creature of the political system.”
But a strong Warren candidacy would threaten the presumptive White House run of Hillary Clinton and pose further challenges to Democratic harmony.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, a liberal Vermont independent, is considering his own populist run for the White House in 2016. Yet while he caucuses with Democrats in the Senate, the outspoken lawmaker says the party is neglecting its working-class roots.
“I would say, if you go out on the street and you talk to people and say, which is the party of the American working class? People would look to you like you’re a little bit crazy; they wouldn’t know what you were talking about and they certainly wouldn’t identify the Democrats,” Sanders told NPR this week.
He added the “abysmally low vote for the Democrats among white, working-class people” in this month’s mid-term elections was because “Democrats have not made it clear that they are prepared to stand with the working people of this country.”
The intra-caucus election this week of Rep. Frank Pallone Jr. of New Jersey as the party’s new top member of the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee also caused some friction between leadership and some rank-and-file members.
Pelosi campaigned vigorously for her close friend and fellow Californian, Rep. Anna Eshoo, to succeed retiring Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., as the ranking Democrat on the committee. But in a blow to leadership, the full caucus elected Pallone in a close vote.
Pallone denied his victory was emblematic of a larger schism with the House Democratic Caucus.
“This is in no way a referendum on the leadership,” Pallone told reporters after the close-door election. “There’s always going to be squabbles. It’s a campaign. It’s like any campaign.”
But others said the election should serve as a wake-up call to remind Democratic leadership to be more inclusive of rank-and-file members.
Leadership has “always paid attention to the rank and file. But you’ve got to not only pay attention but to listen to what folks are saying and take everything into consideration,” said Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr., D-N.J., a Pallone supporter. “There is a lesson to be learned here when everyone looks at it.”
On immigration, President Obama’s proposed executive action to shield millions of illegal immigrants from deportation, which he was expected to announce late Thursday, could force a divide in the caucus.
Because Congress has failed to pass immigration reform legislation, congressional Democratic leaders have praised the president for taking action. But speculation persists that a handful of moderate senators could come out against the president’s move — a scenario that would hurt party unity, and one Republicans would easily exploit for politically gain.
And with public opinion divided on whether the president should act unilaterally — including polling that shows at least 25 percent of Democratic voters opposed to such a move — some Democrats privately fear the party could take a beating over the issue in 2016.
Senate Democrats also have chafed at the timing of Obama’s announcement, pressing the president to hold off at least until they can finish their legislative business for the year, which includes passing an omnibus spending bill to keep the government funded past early December.
