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Thursday, July 18, 2019
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
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AKAASH TUMULURI | COLUMN
F
orget
about
reaching
across the aisle. House
Democrats
are
having
trouble reaching across their
own pews.
Pews that need to be unified
now, more than ever. It’s pre-
election fever, the same as we’ve
seen before — a tide that in 2016
crested on the political fringes
and brought us candidates like
Trump and Bernie — making
moderates
wary
with
the
specter of 2020 looming on
the
not-so-distant
horizon.
Speaker of the House Nancy
Pelosi seems to be attempting
her best Moses impersonation,
trying to single-handedly quell
the progressive wave of far-
leftists while claiming moral
high ground based on her fight
for unification that supposedly
prioritizes
the
party,
not
necessarily progressivism.
Supporters of “The Squad,”
as Democratic Representatives
Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez
of New York, Ilhan Omar of
Minnesota, Rashida Tlaib of
Michigan and Ayanna Pressley
of Massachusetts are known,
will find this a hard pill to
swallow. Especially after the
House’s support of a $4.6 billion
border funding bill lacking many
conditions of improvement for
migrant families and children
—
sparking
loud
dissent
from
progressives
that
aim
to “disrupt” Congress like a
Silicon Valley startup.
The headliners of this fight
are, of course, AOC and Pelosi.
They’ve traded jabs left and
right, “trapped in a generational
and ideological tangle” that
threatens the strength of the
Democratic party as a whole,
according to Maureen Dowd of
the New York Times. It’s gotten
to the point where Ocasio-
Cortez, whose statements I
would have stood by about a
month ago, has accused Pelosi
of “targeting women of color.”
Pelosi,
among
many
other
things, helped our first African
American president not only
reach the highest office, but
enact his agenda against an
opposition hell-bent on seeing
his name go down as a footnote
in history. I’m sorry, AOC, I
just can’t see it. I laud your
attempt to try and shake up
Congress, I do. It needs one,
badly, but this doesn’t seem
like the way to do it.
Especially because this is
the first time in a while that
the Democrats have completely
taken control of the news cycle
— but for all the wrong reasons.
The
House
Democrats’
Twitter
account
feuding
with
Ocasio-Cortez’s
Chief
of Staff, Saikat Chakrabarti.
Mr.
Chakrabarti
comparing
moderate
Democrats
to
Southern Democrats in the 50’s.
Rep. Mark Pocan of Wisconsin
calling the bipartisan Problem
Solvers
Caucus
the
“Child
Abuse Caucus.” And again, the
example of AOC and Pelosi’s
very
public
admonitions
of each other fits this bill.
All
these
stories
serve
as
nothing more than fuel for a
Republican Party that seems
content
sitting
back
and
watching the Democrats set
fire to themselves right before
the primaries roll around.
But even framing it like
that makes me uneasy. The
Democrats have made strides.
They took back the House in
2018 — a win led by Pelosi,
who focused on flipping red
seats blue by placing emphasis
on a moderate agenda. In her
current role as speaker, she
seemed adept at navigating
the
most
discombobulated
White House in history, able
to simultaneously admonish
the President for his numerous
mistakes and secure his ear
whenever necessary to reach
across the aisle. “The Squad”
and their allies, on the other
hand, have ignited a liberal,
progressive
coalition
that
demands to be heard by the
Democratic elite — believed to
be helmed by Pelosi.
That’s where we find the
fork in the road. It’s all about
belief — and the lack thereof.
Progressive Democrats don’t
believe House leadership is
doing enough to push back
against conservative, Senate-
led policy. Pelosi and other
moderates believe the youthful
far-left isn’t being pragmatic
and will lead the party down a
frustrating road of government
shutdowns
and
political
stalemates.
And,
the
worst
part is, they’re both right.
The new wave of freshmen
representatives
simply
don’t
yet have the political capital
to whip votes necessary to
enact their agenda. And the
moderates
that
control
the
House fail at igniting the youth
they so desperately need to take
back the highest office.
Despite all this, the speaker
seems to be playing her cards
close to her chest, and for what?
AOC is a star, the darling-child
with a 4.8-million-and-growing
online following, the new face
of a movement, undoubtedly
an
asset
for
a
Democratic
party lacking in emotionally-
charged
constituency.
They
should be working together
— the two women leading
the Democratic Party into a
unified,
progressive
future.
The problem? Neither can see
past each other’s differences
to the wealth of similarity they
share, because they both have
precedent to stand by their
beliefs. Bernie’s meteoric rise
in the 2016 primaries validates
AOC and her allies’ call for a
more progressive agenda, and
the 2018 midterms validates
Pelosi’s slow-and-steady MO for
change.
So here we are again, stuck in
a battle for the future of a party
that seems to be returning to
the same road, again and again,
hoping for it to lead somewhere
new each time. And it’s hard for
me to blame anyone for it.
So I’m sorry. I’m tired of
seeing the same progressive
versus moderate battle with
sudden-death
brutality;
I’m
tired of watching those I believe
in become caught up in arbitrary
and misguided climbs to the
highest plane of morality; I’m
tired of seeing the Democrats,
again, focus on sweet nothings
that
are
beside
the
point.
Because the point is Trump will
be reelected if the Democrats
can’t
find
a
way
to
stop
bickering. If that happens, it
would be as close to the death of
the Democratic Party as we will
have ever seen. You get the sense
that the collective Democratic
ego that made it a foregone
conclusion Hillary would win
in 2016 is rearing its ugly head
once again. The irony of course
being the lack of hindsight in
2020. But numbingly, all I can
say is this: Once again, we can’t
do more than wait, see and
hope. Mostly just hope.
Akaash Tumuluri can be reached at
tumula@umich.edu.
Fighting for the future of the Democratic Party
The problem?
Neither can see
past each other’s
differences