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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

