NEW YORK — The Democratic Celebration’s prime two congressional leaders — each New Yorkers — agree: The social gathering misplaced massive within the election over voters’ financial fears and should now overhaul its pocketbook messaging to win once more.
“Promises to help working people sound nice, but they mean nothing without real results,” Senate Minority Chief Chuck Schumer mentioned in kicking off the brand new Congress.
“House Democrats will fight hard to protect working-class Americans and the things that matter to them, not the wealthy, the well-off and the well-connected,” Home Minority Chief Hakeem Jeffries vowed in his personal flooring speech.
However different New York Democrats in Congress aren’t as certain.
Interviews with almost each New York Home Democrat reveal variations on the place they imagine their social gathering’s push in opposition to incoming President Donald Trump ought to begin, underscoring Jeffries’ problem in main a big-tent caucus that ranges from socialists to Blue Canine. Some Home members are much less humbled by their social gathering’s election drubbing than others, some blame messaging and others blame tradition wars — even when probably the most constant theme rising is the pressing must wrestle again the financial narrative from the Republicans.
The Empire State could have an outsized function in that mission with Schumer and Jeffries because the highest-ranking Democrats in Washington, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand main the Senate Dems’ marketing campaign arm, a number of Home New Yorkers as rating members and caucus chairs and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as a nationwide progressive standard-bearer. New York was one of many few shiny spots in final yr’s election for Democrats, too — with the social gathering choosing up three Home seats there.
A few of these Democrats are actually starting to construct out the case on price of dwelling. Within the two months since Republicans received the White Home, Senate and Home, Trump has stacked his administration picks with not less than 13 billionaires and enabled Musk to meddle with a authorities shutdown deal with misinformation that dismissed the tangible implications of such an motion.
Because the Home session ended final month, Jeffries flicked at this as his Republican counterparts struggled from self-inflicted wounds, specifically Trump and Musk’s Eleventh-hour torpedoing of a bipartisanship shutdown package deal and last-minute hedging from Home conservatives on supporting Mike Johnson (R-La.) for speaker.
“House Democrats have successfully stopped the billionaire boys club,” the minority chief instructed reporters.
And whereas kitchen-table economics will drive the narrative for Democrats, the messaging received’t be a one-size-fits-all method.
A number of of Jeffries’ fellow members from New York say he’s granted them the latitude to method Trump 2.0 in a means that’s finest for them and their districts.
Rep. Tom Suozzi, one in every of 48 Home Democrats who not too long ago voted for the Laken Riley Act cracking down on unlawful immigration, counseled the chief as “not very heavy handed” and mentioned he believes the border is a key place to begin for his social gathering because it prepares for Trump 2.0.
“If you want to actually do something effectively, and not just do it for political purposes … which is to secure the border, which is to fix the broken asylum system, which is to modernize the legal immigration system, you should really be doing it on a bipartisan basis,” Suozzi mentioned in an interview.
Rep. Yvette Clarke, who chairs the Congressional Black Caucus, mentioned extra broadly it’s about combating misinformation: “The bottom line to it is that we have to create an ecosystem of truth.”
Nonetheless, others, together with Reps. Greg Meeks, Nydia Velázquez and Pat Ryan, mentioned in interviews that Democrats ought to start with the economic system.
“If there’s one takeaway, in my view, of this last set of elections, it’s us clearly reasserting we are for middle class and working-class people and against big corporations and billionaires,” Ryan, a frontline Democrat within the Hudson Valley, instructed POLITICO.
Within the Senate, Schumer has argued it’s Republicans — not Democrats — who’re the social gathering of the privileged as he used the waning weeks of 2024 to speedily verify Biden-appointed judges. He led the outgoing majority in confirming 235 of them — greater than any administration this century.
“For a very long time, the norm was to prioritize judicial nominees who came from a privileged pool. Most of them were prosecutors or from large, corporate law firms. Most were male, most were white,” the 74-year-old Brooklynite mentioned in a flooring speech. “But when Senate Democrats entered the majority, we cast a wider net.”
For Schumer, who was additionally minority chief when Trump first took workplace in 2017, the subsequent process forward will contain figuring out which of Trump’s Cupboard appointees Democrats ought to reject and ensure. He has but to supply specifics publicly in regards to the president-elect’s picks, however he instructed his majority chief alternative Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) that Democrats plan to totally vet every nominee and signaled Republicans ought to do the identical.
The affirmation hearings set to start this month will current the subsequent massive alternative for Democrats to indicate the place Republicans’ successful method to the economic system could possibly be extra notion than actuality, particularly as a result of Trump has tapped a number of billionaires with restricted {qualifications} to affix his Cupboard.
Maybe the largest probability Democrats could have this yr to place the GOP on the defensive in regards to the economic system would be the yearlong struggle over Trump’s signature tax cuts, which expire in December. Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), former chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, believes the social gathering’s sources ought to be centered on that laws.
“The starting point is the biggest proposals that Trump is going to push that showcase the difference between them and us,” Jayapal mentioned in an interview. “So I think of the Trump tax scam as being No. 1, because I think that when you have a Cabinet full of billionaires, this is an opportunity for Democrats to show how we want the economy to work for poor people and working people.”
Newly reelected GOP Rep. Mike Lawler of New York has mentioned he would work with Democrats, together with on restoring the state and native tax deduction, or SALT, however he cautioned: “I do encourage my Democratic colleagues not to do the Resistance 2.0.”
Certainly, a full-time resistance is not Democrats’ plan. Stressing areas primed for bipartisanship, like immigration, and areas the place they may stand their floor, like Medicare, is far nearer to how their technique is shaping up.
Jeffries and Schumer, who’ve a strong working relationship as fellow Brooklynites, albeit from totally different generations, have been unanimously reelected as convention leaders. Jeffries is the son of a social employee and substance abuse counselor. Schumer is the son of an exterminator and homemaker. Meeks mentioned in an interview that their backgrounds will assist persuade voters forward of the midterms that Democrats perceive their financial struggles “because they have lived it themselves.”
However the two New Yorkers are additionally members of the political institution.
“People understand that the Democratic Party and Republican Party, a lot of them get money from a lot of the same people, and the money in our politics is corrupting,” mentioned New York Working Households Celebration co-director Jasmine Gripper. “So it feels like people are fighting for the billionaires, but not fighting for the everyday voter and the everyday American.”
Regardless of such perceptions, Democratic Celebration leaders say they’re higher positioned to face off in opposition to Trump than when he first occupied the White Home. Jeffries has sought to underscore that his minority isn’t all that minor. The federal government shutdown chaos of final month proved that Johnson wants some Democrats to bail him out on key legislative fights. And Jeffries has repeatedly famous that the GOP’s five-seat benefit is way narrower than their margin of 47, when Trump took workplace in 2017.
“My prediction is that House Democrats under Leader Jeffries are going to be the most powerful minority that we’ve seen in recent history, because the Republican margin of control is so vanishingly small,” Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.) mentioned in an interview. “It is unlikely that the Republicans will be able to get anything major done without the buy-in of Leader Jeffries and House Democrats.”
