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Analysis
Democrats are furious: why Joe Biden is now under pressure within his own ranks
Celebrating on the streets of Philadelphia, honking horns in New York City, singing in front of the White House in Washington – you probably haven’t seen so many happy Democrats in the US since Barack Obama won the US presidential election. .
The election of current President Donald Trump, the victory of Democrat Joe Biden and his vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris: that was the political goal for which the Democratic Party had been working for four years. To achieve this, the party had appeared as united as it rarely was in months, from Virginia’s most conservative MPs to left-wing party stars like two-time presidential candidate Bernie Sanders and MP Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez.
Image: keystone
But less than half a week later, it seems, the party atmosphere is already gone. Democrats are arguing about how to proceed, and especially about how abandoned the reign of Biden and Harris should be.
What is the dispute about
Many people on the streets were excited about the outcome of the Democratic elections. But for many Democratic congressional candidates, it was a disappointment.: In one chamber, the House of Representatives, they have lost at least four seats compared to the last elections of 2018. In the other, the Senate, they can win a maximum of as many seats as the Republicans, and that only if they win both second round elections in the state, which expire in January. The blue wave, the landslide Democratic victory many hope, did not come in this election.
And the question that is causing Democrats to argue violently again is: who is to blame?
For several central-conservative democratic politicians, the answer is clear: it was left-wing parties like Ocasio-Cortez who made life difficult for the party., with its calls for “democratic socialism” and slogans such as “defunding the police”, that is, cuts in police budgets. That, according to the argument of the self-proclaimed moderates, scared many voters.
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Abigail Spanberger, a Democratic Representative from Virginia, narrowly defended her seat against a Republican. In a conference call, the recording of which was published by the Washington Post, on Wednesday, the day after the US election, he blurted out his frustration at the close contest. Among other things, Spanberger said with a view to the next congressional elections in two years:
“If we book Tuesday as a success, we will be devastated in 2022.”
Ocasio-Cortez does not want to let the accusation fall on her – and in interviews with several US media she accuses the parliamentarians who lost their election to Republicans of simply having invested very little in the electoral campaign on social networks like Facebook – during theirs. Republican opponents were much more present there. Ocasio-Cortez, 31, claims the opposite of what moderate Democrats say. “All the candidates from a controversial constituency who campaigned for universal healthcare have won,” he said in an interview with CNN.
His thesis, shared by other left-wing Democrats: Whoever campaigns for left-wing issues wins.
Video: YouTube / CNN
In an interview with the New York Times, Ocasio-Cortez revealed that she is frustrated by her party’s resistance to left-wing positions, and that therefore she had even thought about it before this year’s election, after less of two. Years in Congress to get out of politics.
What left-wing Democrats want now
The left wing of the Democratic Party has grown in recent years. It has become more influential: Demands like a minimum wage of $ 15 an hour or a green and climate-friendly restructuring of the US economy are now mainstream in the party.Biden himself featured him in television duels with Donald Trump.
And the left, progressive politicians have mobilized many voters: The fact that Joe Biden won electoral votes in Georgia and Pennsylvania has a lot to do with the mobilization of African American voters in the metropolises of Atlanta and Philadelphia.
Now the left also wants their demands to become part of Biden and Harris government policy. Shortly after Biden’s victory, left-wing senator and former presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren demanded that Democrats now have “courageous plans” to overcome America’s economic and health crisis.
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Biden has already announced that his government cabinet should be ethnically diverse and that it should accommodate many women and non-straight people. But that’s not enough for progressive Democrats: They want representatives from their wing like Warren or Sanders to get ministerial posts.
Sanders himself has already made it clear that he wants to shift US policy to the left in the coming months and years. In a video message on Twitter, after congratulating Biden, he spoke of the fact that he would introduce a legislative package in the Senate that, among other things, would abolish “starvation wages”, invest heavily in infrastructure and create millions of jobs. He also wants the US energy sector to be respectful of the climate.
What the most conservative Democrats want
Several states of the so-called US Rust Belt, in northeastern states such as Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, were decisive for Joe Biden’s electoral victory. Donald Trump conquered these states, which were previously heavily influenced by industrial jobs and unions, from the Democrats in 2016, and Biden took them back.
The more conservative Democrats say Democrats only managed to do that because they won voters from Republicans. And they could only have done so because these voters weren’t too scared of positions that were too left-wing, like the one that followed the abolition of private health insurance or a particularly quick exit from oil production.
Image: AP / FR170980 AP
Rahm Emanuel, former White House chief of staff under Barack Obama and former Chicago mayor said:
“We needed people to win alternate voters. If you campaign properly, you can change who runs the country. “
Emanuel himself is an encouragement to many left-wing Democrats, not least because, as mayor of Chicago, he appears to have delayed the investigation of a police crime so as not to jeopardize his re-election.
How Biden Can Mediate the Dispute
So the discussion within his own party could become a serious problem for Joe Biden. – even before he is sworn in on January 20, 2021 and moves into the White House.
But there are at least two reasons that suggest that Biden can defuse the dispute.
- Many left-wing issues are not that controversial. The Democratic Party has moved on many issues in recent years. Demands like those of a determined fight against climate change or marriage for all – unlike ten years ago – are now also central-conservative democrats. The New York Times writes that several prominent moderate Democrats say in interviews that they share many of the goals of the left, but that they advise communicating these goals carefully so as not to scare conservative voters. Otherwise, they argue, there is a risk that these voters will return to the Republicans.
- Biden is an indulgent guy. President-elect Joe Biden is someone who can listen well to other people, even if he doesn’t share their opinion. In a podcast interview with the editor-in-chief of the news portal vox.com, Ezra Klein, Biden’s biographer Evan Osnos recently said that even political opponents said of Biden: “He doesn’t treat you like an idiot.” Sanders, the star of the Left Democrats, appears to share this assessment. He values Biden personally, despite all the differences in content. The “New York Times” quoted Sanders as saying, “Joe is my friend.” That, the US media write, is also one of the reasons that Sanders fully supported Biden in the election campaign, as opposed to Hillary Clinton’s candidacy in 2016.
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How could it be a way out of the dispute between the left and the conservatives? According to the New York Times, several moderate Democrats have called on Biden to implement political projects that support both parties as quickly as possible. An example: a minimum wage in the entire United States of $ 15 an hour.