The Daily - Division Among the Democrats

Episode Date: November 16, 2020

For four years, Democrats had been united behind the mission of defeating President Trump.But after the election of Joe Biden, the party’s disappointing showing in congressional races — losing seats in the House and facing a struggle for even narrow control of the Senate — has exposed the rifts between progressives and moderates.In interviews with The New York Times, House members on each side of that divide — Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Representative Conor Lamb of Pennsylvania — shared their views about how the Democrats can win back support in local races.We want to hear from you. Fill out our survey about The Daily and other shows at: nytimes.com/thedailysurvey Guest: Astead W. Herndon, a national political reporter for The New York Times. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily Background reading: In the wake of Joe Biden’s victory, the divides that have long simmered among Democrats are now beginning to burst into the open.In an interview with The New York Times, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez dismissed criticism from House moderates and said the next few weeks would set the tone for how the incoming administration would be received by liberal activists.Representative Conor Lamb told The Times that he expected the Biden team to govern as it had campaigned: with progressives at arm’s length.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Today. After losing seats in the House of Representatives on Election Day, Democrats are pointing fingers and debating which wing of their party is at fault. My colleague, Astead Herndon, spoke to two House members at the center of that debate. It's Monday, November 16th. So Astead, after election night, instead of taking a very well-earned rest, you began pursuing a really interesting line of reporting inside the Democratic Party. So tell us about that.

After the election results start to roll in, what you get to see is some real shock results for the party. They didn't win seats in the House as they thought they would. They lost them. They didn't win some of those key Senate races. And so there was a feeling that some of that tension that we knew existed within the party, the tension between moderates and progressives, was going to pop back up. So I'd like to begin by being explicitly clear. What I'm about to say, I ask, and this is off the record.

And then a few days after the election, a private conference call was leaked to The Washington Post. I think that we need to be pretty clear about the fact that Tuesday, from a congressional standpoint, it was a failure. It was not a success. We lost members who shouldn't have lost. frontline members, so members who are in the most competitive House districts, the folks that really delivered Democrats the big House majority they had in 2018, really sounding off. The number one concern and thing that people brought to me was defunding the police. And I've heard from colleagues who have said, oh, it's the language of the street. We should respect that.

We're in Congress. We are professionals. We are supposed to talk about things in the way where we need what we're talking about. If we don't mean we should defund the police, we shouldn't say that. to be a concern of the moderates in the House. She says that the number one thing she was hearing from her voters was about defunding the police. And she says the language from some of those activists and some of those protesters that we saw on issues like policing was hurting Democrats in these swing districts. And we need to not ever use the word socialist or socialism ever again, because while people think it doesn't matter, it does matter. And we lost good members because of that.

She was pretty clear that they have to disavow words like socialism or that they couldn't win in those places. And I would hope that moving forward, we will not just work to hold the majority, but we will actually work to communicate to the American people that our policies are what is good. So thank you for the time. And as we saw some of these tensions playing out on the call, it became clear that this was going to be a vocal battle between House Democrats. So I decided to call probably the most vocal of those progressive members of the House and certainly certainly the most famous. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Hi, it's the staff from The Times. How are you? Hi, I'm well. How are you?

Good, good. What did you want to ask her? I wanted to get a sense of her reaction to the call and just how she saw the future going forward, not only for herself and her role in the progressive movement, but how are progressives going to deal with other members in their own caucus who have decided that they were the reasons why Democrats had lost seats? I guess I want to start with just like what you think your kind of macro takeaway is now that we finally have a full scope of results. Well, you know, macro, we know that

progressive policies do not hurt candidates. Every single candidate that co-sponsored Medicare for All in a swing district kept their seat. We're still seeing a look at Green New Deal, but you know, I think that was the big thing that we learned. We learned that high turnout elections are not automatically Dem wins. But also, I believe we've learned that we can't run away from progressive policy either. That's not decisive one way or another. She thinks that what came out of Tuesday was a real affirmation of progressive way of thinking, not only policy, but also a kind of political view that the base delivered the win to Joe Biden and that the base

was supporting candidates who stood up for issues that she wants to see. So things like Medicare for all and things like the Green New Deal. Is she accurate that nobody who sponsored bills on these issues, like Medicare for All, lost their seat in this election? Is that right? She's right, but it's kind of a self-fulfilling thing. The people who sponsor these type of bills are people who think that they can win in their district with these type of bills. There were some members of a little more swingier districts who have backed things like Medicare for All, like Katie Porter out in California. But those aren't the toughest districts that Democrats face. So we're using swing districts in the kind of broader sense here.

But she is technically correct that they didn't lose. So how does Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez explain why Democrats in the House had such a tough election? Why they actually lost seats in spite of the fact that the Democratic nominee won the White House? Well, the first argument she makes is one of process, of tactics. We know about extreme vulnerabilities in just how Democrats run campaigns. And I started to say, OK, well, let me see if they actually did their job. Right. And what I found was just criminal. It was just malpractice. Conor Lamb spent two thousand dollars on Facebook the week before the election.

She actually names one of her colleagues, a moderate from Pennsylvania, Connor Lamb, and says that his campaign spending, particularly on Facebook, was simply just inadequate, even though he squeaked out a win. Anybody who is not on the Internet in a real way in the year of our Lord 2020 can blame this on anybody else when you're not even on the Internet. So I just want to be clear. You seem to be saying that there are larger factors besides the kind of messaging that these groups are falling back on for the kind of moderate wing, you think, in terms of like investment in digital and the like. back on for the kind of moderate wing you think in terms of like investment in digital and the like? Yes, because the thing is, is like a lot of these folks are pointing towards Republican messaging that they feel killed them, right? And the problem is, is first of all, there's going to be very effective Republican messaging every single cycle. My take is why were you so vulnerable to that attack? Why was that attack so effective to begin with? And if you're not door knocking, if you're not on the internet, if your main points of reliance are TV and mail, then you're not running a campaign on

all cylinders. She goes on to say that the reason these tactics matter, the reason why things like digital investment and advertising on Facebook is important, is because that's where Republicans are doing their most negative messaging on Democrats. That if Democrats were spending more money in those places, they could give voters a kind of dual message that could combat the negative framing that Republicans are pummeling on them. And I should say, as a political reporter for a long time, it is unusual for a member of the House of Representatives to assail the savviness of their colleagues' campaigns on such a process level. This is unusual. A lot of this is unusual. I mean, her speaking on the day that Biden wins the nomination is unusual. Her level of candor and specificness about her colleagues and what their campaigns are, her admitting that she looked up the amount of how much Conor Lamb spent on Facebook is unusual. But I think that's been

part of the reason she has become the figure that she has, is a level of authenticity and is a level of transparency. And I think that's in line with kind of the AOC we've come to know. So what else did you ask Ocasio-Cortez? She had talked a lot about what she thought that she got right and what progressives had gotten right. So I wanted to ask what surprised her on election day and was there anything that happened that made her rethink her previously held beliefs? Yes. I, you know, the share of white support for Trump did. I looked at that and I was like, we have a lot of work to do and we need to do a lot

of anti-racist deep canvassing in this country because if we keep losing white shares and just allowing Facebook to radicalize more and more white voters in the white electorate. There's no amount of people of color and young people that you can turn out to offset that. Like, we actually need to do this. But the problem is that just right now, I think a lot of Dems' strategy is to avoid actually working through this, you know, avoid poking the bear. That's essentially what the argument is with defund, right? It's like, don't agitate issues of racial resentment. And I don't think that that is sustainable.

So the problem is that people in some of the most important decision-making positions in the party are becoming so blinded to this anti-activist sentiment that they are blinding themselves to the very assets that they offer, right? Because these movements are not going away. And now they're blaming us for their loss. And so I need my colleagues to understand that we are not the enemy. And that their base is not the enemy. But the movement for Black Lives is not the enemy. That Medicare for All is not the enemy. So that's the thing. This isn't even just a winning an argument. It's that if they keep going after the wrong thing, I mean, they're just setting up their own obsolescence.

I, the left, the progressives in Congress, we're actually the solution to your political problems if you would let us be. But you're too afraid of us and of these hot button issues like race and policing to see it or to call upon us for political help. Right. She's saying that you can't get around these type of topics and that they're topics that are core to the kind of political questions of our time. responding to Republican attacks, but owning a kind of their own vision of what issues like policing should look like. And that in doing so, you can make a more offensive appeal to some of these white voters, rather than just saying, hey, we're not as scary as Republicans are saying we are. Because the belief that she has is that you cannot run away from the thorniness of this topic, that there's no amount of disavowing that's going to get you to a place where you're okay, to the amount of voters that Democrats need in these places. She's making an argument of persuasion

that we sometimes see moderates make on other issues. She's just doing it on something like race. And in her mind, the failure of the Democratic Party to do this work that she's talking about, to engage the thorny topics like race, could ultimately be a death sentence for the party because it would make the party obsolete with its very future, young voters, progressive voters. Exactly. What we saw even in the Democratic primary was an electorate that did want people to talk about these things. Once you got kind of under the age of 45, once you got to what she

believes is the future of the Democratic Party, that's certainly not the electorate that made Joe Biden the nominee, but was part of the electorate that made Joe Biden the nominee, but was part of the electorate that made Joe Biden the president. What she is saying to colleagues in the House and in the Senate and to the Biden administration also is that you can't just think about one side of that coin and that Democrats going forward should embrace a more affirmative view of these issues because that's their political future and the policy future. I have a couple of things that I want to get to about Biden specifically. What is your expectation about kind of how open you are expecting this administration to be

to the left? And what is the strategy in terms of moving them? Are you looking to transition? Are you looking to appointments? Is it about long-term policy? Like, what are you most focused on? So, I don't know how open they'll be. And it's not a personal thing. It's just, I think the history of the party tends to be that we'll get really excited about the grassroots to get elected. And then those communities are promptly abandoned, like right after an election. And so I do not know. If they are hostile, if they have an administration that is kind of bent to the John Kasich view of who Joe Biden should be. What do you do?

Well, I'll be bummed because we're going to lose. It's like it's really hard for us to turn out non-voters when they feel like nothing changes for them. And when they feel like people don't see them or even acknowledge their turnout. I mean, I guess I have one last macro question. It's like, you are clearly diagnosing kind of a national trend, a leading voice, maybe the most famous voice on the left. Where is it going for you in the next four years? I mean, like, yeah, like, what's what's the plan?

I don't know. Well, the reason I don't know is because I think a lot of those decisions are going to be up to how hostile the party is to the progressive left. You know, the last two years have been pretty hostile. By hostile, I mean internally. Externally, we've been winning. Externally, there's a ton of support. Externally, it's very positive. But internally, in terms of the internal politics of the party, it's been extremely hostile

towards, you know, anything that even smells progressive. I mean, these like caucus calls were leaked this week and the initial reaction was more hostility. You know, part of me is hoping that this is just like, maybe this is just an emotional reaction, but if it becomes a strategy, it's going to be, you know, it's not good. It's just not healthy. I don't even know if I want to be in politics. You know, for real, in the first six months of 2018, I didn't even know if I was going to run for re-election this year. It was so bad.

Yeah, no, it was so bad. No, it was so bad. I mean, I'm serious when I tell people, like, the odds of me running for higher office and the odds of me just, like, going off and, like, trying to start a homestead somewhere are probably the same. Well, thank you. I appreciate, as always, your ability to be explicit and clear. Cool. If you have anything else or you think of something, as always, feel free to reach out. I appreciate your time.

Yeah, no worries. Thank you so much. Yeah, have a great day. All right. You too. Bye-bye. So after we got off the phone, we decided to publish the interview immediately because she had been so, frankly, newsy. And the reactions start rolling in

from all corners of the Democratic Party. And one of them was the team of Congressman Conor Lamb of Pennsylvania. Who she criticized. Right. And he wanted to talk about that and how she had cast his wing of the Democratic Party. We'll be right back. Donna, you're on with Ested. Hey, Ested. How are you? I'm doing well. Thank you for making some

time, Congressman. How are you? Yeah, good well. Thank you for making some time. Congressman. How are you? Yeah, good. I'm not sure if we've ever talked before, but, uh, I do not think so.

So the next day, as I was driving, I got a call from Congressman Connor lamb. I looked at your Twitter thing one time. Do you have like a Muppet as your, I do. Okay. I'm a big Muppet fan.

So I saw that. And it kind of stuck in my mind. So that was cool. Yeah, it's like a Will Smith cartoon character that my friend said I look like. And it's really... Okay. The congressman is a 36-year-old Democrat from Pennsylvania. He's a former prosecutor.

He served in the military and kind of the archetype of the wave of moderates that won in those 2018 races. So I decided to just start with what Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez said. I asked him directly about her critique of his campaign. You know, yesterday I interviewed Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez, and she mentioned you and specifically how you all ran your race. I wanted to get a kind of fact check quickly. Did you all spend just a few thousand on Facebook the week before the election?

She doesn't have any idea how we ran our campaign or what we spent, to be honest with you. So, yeah, I mean, her statement was wrong, but there's a deeper truth there, which is just that our districts and our campaigns are extremely different. The fact is that in general elections in these districts, particularly in the ones where President Trump himself campaigns over and over and over again and attacks members within their own districts, within their own Republican-leading districts like me and like Representative Slotkin and Representative Stanberg

and all these people, the message matters. It's not a question of door knocking or Facebook. It matters what policies you stand for and which ones you don't. And what we heard from a lot of our constituents was that they do not like the Democratic message when it comes to police in western Pennsylvania, when it comes to jobs and energy, and that we need to do a lot of work to fix that. And the American people just showed us in massive numbers generally which side of these issues that they are on. And they sent us a Republican Senate

and a Democratic president. We're going to have to do things that we can compromise over. So Lamb is rejecting Ocasio-Cortez's argument on a few levels. He's saying that races like his are not determined by the digital savviness of their operation,

but instead by the Democratic Party's overall message and that right now that message in his mind is being kind of hijacked by progressives like Ocasio-Cortez and that that's bad for candidates like him who have to win over these very moderate and in some cases pretty conservative-leaning districts. Right.

He's saying that his race is kind of collateral damage for the rise of progressives like Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez, that even if he doesn't support these things, that because vocal members of the Democratic Party are saying them and are supported by activists who say them, it falls on moderates to have to defend these in the Republican-leaning districts. And he's saying that that message problem is not a question of tactics and it's not a question of how these campaigns are maneuvering, but it's kind of the bare function of politics that the party has moved to left and it's hurting the center. I'm not in the blame game here. I'm not trying to blame any individual member for what happened

in any other member's race. But I'm giving you an honest account of what I'm hearing from my own constituents, which is that they are extremely frustrated by the message of defunding the police and banning tracking. I, as a Democrat, am just as frustrated because those things aren't just unpopular. They're completely unrealistic. They aren't going to happen, and they amount to false promises by the people that call for them. And it just creates a lot of confusion in the minds of voters because these are very serious issues to them. If someone in your family makes their living in some way connected to natural gas, whether on the pipeline itself or, you know, even in a restaurant that serves natural gas workers, this isn't something to joke around about or be casual

about in your language. And that's what we're trying to say, that the rhetoric and the policies and all that stuff, it has gone way too far. It needs to be dialed back and it needs to be rooted in common sense, in reality, and yes, politics, because we need districts like mine to stay at the majority and get something done for the people that we care about the most. When he says districts like mine, I wanted to know more. So I asked, what if it's your districts that are pulling the Democratic Party away from policies it does support? We did see a lot of polling out of the primary that said, you know, obviously why some progressive candidates lost the race, that the issues themselves were popular among Democrats, that things like single payer health insurance or something like the Green New Deal was popular among the base,

even if the candidates were losing. What's your response to the idea that the issues are popular? I mean, at the end of the day, it's individual candidates that have to win races, get into office, and then work with their fellow office holders to pass bills into law and change people's lives, right? So you can tell me all the polling you want, but you have to win elections. And I've now been through three very difficult elections in a Republican-leading district with the president personally campaigning against me. And I can tell you that people are not clamoring for the two policies that you just asked about. So, I mean, that probably separates a winner from a loser in a district like mine. The Democratic nominee did not support defunding the police.

I mean, I feel like almost all the members of the Democratic Congress on House and Senate, even folks like Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, came out against that issue. What is the party supposed to do as best to say, hey, we don't support the thing you're saying we support? Well, I think we can do it much more clearly and repetitively and show it with our actions.

But we have to have a little bit of humility here to recognize that it's not enough to just check the box in a comment. If a lot of your followers and supporters do, and there are elected representatives that suggest that they support these things as well, that hurts all of us. message about good law enforcement, how to keep people safe while addressing the systemic racism that I do believe exists and the racial inequities that absolutely do exist. So what he's saying here is, if people like my colleague, Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez, if they really want to help the Democratic Party stay in power and succeed, they're going to recognize the importance of districts like mine, and they're

going to tamp down this rhetoric and understand the danger that it poses to moderates like me, moderates like Congresswoman Spanberger and Congresswoman Slotkin, and they're going to behave differently. He's casting Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez's view as kind of pie-in-the-sky idealism, that no matter what she wishes to be true, that the reality of the way that Washington works is that districts like his give Democrats the power to create and steer policy, and that if that is the progressives' goal, to get things done, then they will let the moderates in their districts have the space to run the campaigns that they need to win, even if that means stepping away from issues like fracking,

like defunding the police, and things that are unpopular in these swing districts. So we have more work to do to convince people that we're right. And I believe the way that we're going to do that is by actually compromising and getting bills passed. So we can say this isn't just the policy position that I hold. This is a change in law that we've made, and you're seeing the benefit of it in your own community. He says you kind of need to come to the center and work with, yes, even Republicans, Because what's going to help Democrats in these districts is not by saying, I'm rigid and I'm right and kind of idealism, but coming back to their voters and saying,

here's what I got done, here's what I got passed, that got us closer to where Democrats want us to go. Right. Which would presumably require some serious swallowing of principles for someone like Ocasio-Cortez, because you don't introduce the Green New Deal in the hope that it gets whittled down to a giant compromise with Republicans. Right. And you don't embrace kind of large-scale ideas and structural change because you think it's politically popular. These folks think it's necessary. They think that it's a response to kind of existential crises facing the country. And so what Lamb is asking them to do is to put

that aside for the reality of politics so that Democrats can remain in power and Republicans who are much worse for Democrats on those issues don't have a clean and easy route to picking them off. I asked this question to Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez. Is there anything that you saw on Tuesday that surprised you? I think that the depth of President Trump's support surprised me. I knew that he was popular. I see it in my district every day. I didn't realize that it was still as popular as it is. And I think that's a very important note of caution for us going forward. The American people are often referred to as divided, but I think it's a little bit more mixed than that, given the mixed results that they have

sent us. I think it's more that the American people are grasping for compromise in whatever form that they can get it. I think that's how you end up with a Joe Biden and a Susan Collins winning in the same election. It strikes me that Congresswoman said a fairly similar thing, that that depth of support is what surprised her. How do you deal with the kind of moral question that she poses? Take the issue of systemic racism or defunding the police, that even if it's good politics to compromise, that it is immoral or that it placates the kind of sense of racism. What's your response to that kind of broader question outside of the political calculation? I just simply look for leadership to the people who have spent their entire lives

and have physically suffered on the front lines of the struggle for civil rights. Someone like John Lewis or Jim Clyburn, who is still with us and actually cautioned us all the other day not to support things like Medicare for All and defying the police because the ultimate moral good is to try to win some of these elections and get things done. the police because the ultimate moral good is to try to win some of these elections and get things done. And I just think that their example as people who had more reason than anyone to be mad at the system, suspicious of working with white people or working with conservatives, and they still made the choice to run for office and stay in office and use the system to try to

achieve good for their people. To me, it's just an extremely powerful example, and it says that compromise is a noble thing when what we're achieving is actual progress. Well, thank you. I appreciate your time, and thank you for hopping on. Yeah, you too, man. Thanks a lot. It's striking to me that both Ocasio-Cortez and Lamb

see Trump's success as really one of the big takeaways from the election. His success, in particular, with white voters, they can agree on that, and they still have such a profoundly different takeaway about the right way for Democrats to respond to that politically. Right. That's what I noticed also. This is a party that knows that the Republicans' motivation of white conservatives, particularly in rural or out-of-city places, is one that Democrats have to deal with.

or out-of-city places is one that Democrats have to deal with if they want to win in House seats, if they want to win in Senate seats. They have to do something that kind of gets at what President Trump has been able to do in both 2016 now and in 2020. Well, if they can both agree that this kind of a voter is central to their future, I wonder which one of these arguments, the progressive case for how to proceed or the moderate restraint case for how to proceed, feels more realistic if you are a Democratic leader looking at the actual results from the election? Well, what Biden has run on is a big tent view of democratic politics that includes both AOC and the Conor Lambs. But it's unclear if he's going to be able to govern in that manner also. And you have here AOC laying out a pretty clear warning for him, saying that it is her belief that if you just go to these people for their votes and you do not deliver when you are

in office, it will make harder the party's ability to come to them the next time. And that is something that is just as existential of a threat as it is to lose the moderates that Conor Lamb represents also. for him, and it's a very interesting question, is is it his job to try to build a bridge between Conor Lamb and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez? Is that his job as the head of the party and the president? Or is his job to kind of cast the progressives off to the side

and build a bridge between the Conor Lambs and the Republicans in Congress, because that may be the quickest way to actually get legislation done. What do you think? I think that we'll see a presidency that is fluid, and it might depend on the issue between which one of those coalitions

he's trying to build. You know, I think about that day of the Democratic National Convention, where you had both Bernie Sanders and John Kasich on the same night, making a case for who Joe Biden is, and why their constituencies and people who support them have a friend in Joe Biden. constituencies and people who support them have a friend in Joe Biden. I remember thinking that one of these people is probably wrong. There's little way that President Joe Biden could be a friend to both John Kasich and Bernie Sanders. We will find out very clearly whether it is in the transition or whether it's in the first hundred days, what constituencies this incoming administration will listen to the most. But what we do know for certain is that the unity that was provided to Joe Biden that was helped by the prospect of him beating Donald Trump, that is over.

And now the things that people supported him for, the demands that they want, the policies that they feel like they are owed, that is all coming to roost. And it is up to him, someone who has thought of himself as a consensus builder for decades, to do that consensus building once again. Thank you, Ested. We appreciate it. Thank you so much. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. So we are in a life or death situation.

And if we don't act right now, we cannot preserve the lives, can't keep saving lives. preserve the lives, can't keep saving lives, and we will absolutely crush our current health care system and infrastructure. The governors of several states, including New Mexico, Oregon, and Washington, began reimposing restrictions on their citizens' movements as record numbers of infections threatened to overwhelm their hospitals. Now we're facing a third wave that is trending to be more dangerous than any we have seen before. New Mexico has issued a temporary stay-at-home order. Oregon is ordering a partial lockdown. And Washington state is ordering restaurants to stop serving customers indoors and banning all indoor social gatherings. Average daily cases in our state have doubled just in the last two weeks.

It cannot go on like this. We have to get this under control or our medical system will soon be overwhelmed. or our medical system will soon be overwhelmed. And for the first time since the election, President Trump briefly acknowledged his loss to President-elect Joe Biden in a tweet on Sunday morning, declaring that, quote, he won, before walking that message back in a separate tweet. Nevertheless, more and more Republican leaders

are breaking ranks with the president, including the governor of Arkansas, Asa Hutchinson, and Trump's former national security advisor, John Bolton, who in an interview with ABC News, urged his party to stop indulging the president's false claims. I think it's very important for leaders of the Republican Party to explain to our voters, who are not as stupid as the Democrats think, that in fact Trump has lost the election and that his claims of election fraud are baseless.

are baseless. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.