Moderates have also joined Shield PAC, founded by Democrats evicted from Republican districts in November, to push back efforts to taunt all Democrats with the slogans of the left. Some have supported a new pro-Israel group, the Democratic Majority for Israel, which is determined to thwart the party’s emerging Palestinian rights movement — and defeat left-wing candidates who they say have crossed an unacceptable political line about the Jewish state.
Understand the infrastructure bill
- A trillion dollar pack has passed. The Senate approved a sweeping bipartisan infrastructure package on Aug. 10, ending weeks of intense negotiations and debates about the largest federal investment in the country’s aging public works system in more than a decade.
- The final vote. The final score in the Senate was 69 for and 30 against. The legislation, yet to pass the House, would affect nearly every facet of the US economy and bolster the country’s response to global warming.
- Main spending areas. In general, the two-pronged plan focuses on spending on transportation, utilities and cleaning up pollution.
- transport. About $110 billion would go into roads, bridges and other transportation projects; $25 billion for airports; and $66 billion for railroads, giving Amtrak the most funding it has received since its founding in 1971.
- Utilities. Senators have also taken $65 billion to connect hard-to-reach rural communities with high-speed internet and help enroll low-income urbanites who can’t afford it, and $8 billion for Western water infrastructure.
- Cleaning up pollution: About $21 billion would go toward clearing abandoned wells and mines, and Superfund sites.
On Friday, yet another centrist group, No labels, started broadcasting an ad backing Texas Representative Henry Cuellar, one of nine budget holdouts challenged by a young Liberal, Jessica Cisneros, in the upcoming primary season. The ad touts him for “fighting for the Biden agenda”, although he’s arguably now trying to uphold much of it.
The idea, moderates say, is to inoculate the party with slogans like Defund the Police that were effectively used against Democrats in the swing district in November, and end progressive gains before divisions in the Democratic Party grow as deep as in the Republican Party. . It’s more about tone and cooperation than ideology, said Mark S. Mellman, a longtime Democratic strategist and pollster who helped establish the Democratic Majority for Israel and its Political Action Committee.
“There’s nothing revolutionary about ‘Medicare for all,’ moving to a clean energy economy, a $15 minimum wage,” he said. “There is a lot of consistency around the general direction of the policy. But the rhetoric is different.”
The efforts leave liberals feeling mortified and concerned that the Democratic establishment is actually hurting the party — by sapping the vital energy of younger voters. Young liberals like Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Jamaal Bowman not only defeated Democratic stalwarts to win their New York seats, but they have captured the imagination of the next generation, said Waleed Shahid, a spokesperson and strategist for Justice Democrats, who insurgents promote progressive candidates.
“The future of the party is much more like AOC than Joe Biden,” he said.
The efforts of the establishment are bearing fruit. One of the political heroes of the left, Nina Turner, lost a special primary for the Cleveland House of Representatives this month after Representative James E. Clyburn of South Carolina, the oldest African American in Congress, and Mr. Mellman ducked in for a little-known but more conciliatory candidate, Shontel Brown. In New Orleans, the favored progressive candidate also lost in the race to replace Representative Cedric Richmond, who joined the Biden White House.
Liberals say the moderates, not the progressives, are now the ones standing in the way of Mr. Biden’s agenda, provoking the House stalemate and threatening the Social Policy bill in the Senate.
