Feb.16

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Dem 51

   

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The Four Democratic Parties in the House

With House Republicans at each other's throats all the time, it is easy for the Democrats to project an image of unity. That is actually not true and more visible when the party is in the minority and they don't need almost ever member to vote "correctly" on every bill. FiveThirtyEight has a piece explaining that there are actually four mini-parties within the House Democratic Caucus, with varying goals, sizes, and amounts of power. Note that the amount of publicity each group gets is in no way related to its size or actual power. Here they are:

• Progressive insurgents: This is the Democratic counterpart to the House Freedom Caucus. They are way out on the edge, but better behaved. It consists of the six progressive members of The Squad. They support a Green New Deal, Medicare for All, abolishing ICE, and similar policy items. They constantly attack the party leadership for being too timid. The best known member is Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY). Because there are only six of them, they don't get a lot of traction. For example, there has never even been a vote on any of their proposals. However, they do get a disproportionate amount of publicity. The members are largely women of color.
  
  
• Progressive establishment: This group of progressives actually has some leadership responsibilities and are less willing to go for radical change of any kind. They are not rabble rousers and are willing to compromise to get bits and pieces of what they want on the theory that getting 10% of what you want is better than getting 0%. This group would include Reps. Katie Porter (D-CA), Maxine Waters (D-CA) and Pramila Jayapal (D-WA). The first group fundamentally does not trust "The System" and wants it radically overhauled. This group wants considerable changes, but is willing to work within the system to achieve small victories from time to time. They are not trying to blow up the status quo. Most are members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.
  
  
• Liberal establishment: This is the core of the House Democratic caucus and most of the leadership, including Reps. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Jim Clyburn (D-SC), and Steny Hoyer (D-MD). On policy issues, they are really not that far from the previous group, but they present themselves differently. They go out of their way to differentiate themselves from The Squad and vigorously assert their independence from the party's left wing. This is the old guard. They may actually have similar policy preferences to the two progressive factions but they have been ground down by years of trying to get things through Congress that they have become much more conscious of what is possible given the forces allied against them. They are thus less ambitious. They prefer to leave pie-in-the-sky proposals on the cutting-room floor and try for things that have some chance of getting through the Senate. When evaluating candidates for the House, electability is #1, #2, and #3, and ideology is maybe #10.
  
  
• Centrist firebrands: These members are more moderate than any of the above. They are certainly not conservative in any sense and the most moderate member is still far to the left of the most progressive House Republican. They sometimes support GOP measures, for example, on tighter border security. Most are members of the Blue Dog Coalition. Prominent members include Reps. Henry Cuellar (D-TX), Jared Golden (D-ME), and Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ). The group was once far larger than it is now due to a general shift of the Democratic Party to the left. They are from red or purple districts where AOC's name is mud. They may truly believe the positions they take or may be just reflecting what their constituents want. They often use the progressives as foils to show what they are not and what they don't want. But if Democrats want to win districts that are R+1 to R+8, they can't eject these members from the caucus or pretend they don't exist. At the moment, 11 House Democrats are in districts that range from R+1 to R+8. If they were to lose all of these in 2024, the chances of the Democrats recapturing the House then would fall to almost zero.
  

The groups are relatively stable over time although individual members sometimes move between groups. (V)