“Schumer is bad at his job,” said one organizer. “Jeffries is not ready for this moment.”
After a Democratic “tsunami” in this week’s midterm elections that has been widely seen as “a mandate to deliver big change,” progressives within and beyond Congress have cast doubt on whether the New York Democrats likely to lead both chambers are actually up for facing Donald Trump’s veto threats and fighting for the “bold agenda” sought by US voters.
As critics of artificial intelligence data centers prepared for a Friday protest outside the Brooklyn home of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer over a “dirty” bill that House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries is suddenly speaking out about, political organizer Corbin Trent argued that “Schumer is bad at his job” and “Jeffries is not ready for this moment.”
The problem is moderate Dems and progressives don’t agree on how to fix the economy. The moderates think the Ezra Klein ‘Abundance’ doctrine is the way to fix it, but progressive want a more economic populist approach. I totally agree that the first mandate from the voters is to fix the economy, but until there’s a consensus among Democrats on how to go about that I don’t think they can really act on that mandate. But acting aggressively to defend democracy from Trump is a mandate they can act on now.
Are we going to keep trying the same type of economic policies that have been in place since Reagan? Cause those clearly aren’t helping anybody other than the billionaire oligarchs.
If we’re going to try something new, then maybe we should try the type of economic policy that progressives are calling for? Just a thought.
Yes, agreed.
That hasn’t stopped moderates since… ever. In practice we should expect both sides to try and push their agenda, but that’s just how politics works. You don’t need a majority or even a plurality in order to try to do something. Waiting until there’s consensus on how to do something is generally a good way not to do it, and politicians are at least in theory supposed to have a vision or agenda they’re in office to implement, not just do whatever the polls say. More importantly, if they don’t do something about the economy nothing else is going to matter because the pendulum will swing right again.