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- cross-posted to:
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“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 whole “voter mandate” thing is thrown around too much these days, and it just isn’t always accurate, but in this case I think it was 100% a mandate. But a mandate for what? The people who voted for this blue wave are not necessarily all aligned on every issue, or even most issues, but they are definitely unified in their disdain for Trump and his cronies. I think the mandate is for the Democrats to finally be true, aggressive opposition to Trump. I think Democrats, both left and center, now see anyone who isn’t able or willing to viciously oppose Trump, and all the plutocrats and other oligarchs who support him, as a liability or even complicit. That is Schumer, and his ilk. They are ineffectual opposition, so they have got to go.
I think everyone is aligned on two issues - affordability and wars.
Both need these two guys to shut up and let the new dems coming in get some work done.
DNC wont admit that the genocide and Epstein support played any role in Harris’s loss in 2024. They are pretending it was all about the economy. so we are being propogandized right now about what the mandate even was about. The DNC is trying to redefine what the blue wave was even about so they dont have to make any changes. They want the status quo-- which means keeping a truly awful republican empowered in government so they can be almost as bad.
+1 on this. Exit polls showed that perceived government corruption was the deciding issue in the 2026 midterms, more than ICE, Israel, or gas prices. Dems are going to lose the coalition before Congress is even sworn in if they start going for the culture war bait. The people in Mississippi who voted blue did so because they want to see the kleptocracy end
It’s such a terrible metric though.
“Hello Mr Progressive, do you think the government is corrupt?”
“Yes, the Republicans are corrupt.”
“Hello Mr Maga, do you think the government is corrupt?”
“Let’s Go Brandon!”
You’re right but we don’t have to speculate. The top four issues for voters were the economy, the state of democracy, immigration and healthcare, and of those the immigration people broke Republican and can be safely disregarded (though some kind of reform is needed in any case). When it comes to more concrete stuff, the war in Iran and data centers also got a lot of attention. So the voter mandate is pretty big; voters want effective opposition but also real change.
One issue is that Dems are better for all of those issues and that was the same in '24, and didn’t matter since most don’t understand these details. They blamed Dems for the steady and best recovery from the pandemic, for things that were not their fault, they don’t really know this stuff and use feels instead. The current price issues are from the senseless tariffs and war, which wouldn’t have with Harris. Maybe the companies would have raised prices for higher profits anyway to make her look bad and they’d fall for it too.
They flip flop, didn’t like prices that the world was also dealing with, and flipped to maga, then back to Dems now. If they used logic and looked at the platforms and see what policies work well elsewhere, what aligns with those, they would stay with Dems as the best chance for progress, but they don’t, and consistently flop around willy-nilly, with the winds, whatever their tiktok told them or for group bonding.
I’m not sure what point relevant to my reply you’re trying to make.
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.