‘Radical left’ get the headlines but centrists dominate new US Congress

{"text":[[{"start":10.24,"text":"Abdul El-Sayed, the newly elected senator for Michigan, wants to tax billionaire wealth, bring in universal healthcare and dismantle ICE."}],[{"start":19.36,"text":"Darializa Avila Chevalier, the new congresswoman for New York, once advocated abolishing the police, prisons and borders as well as seizing the means of production."}],[{"start":29.76,"text":"Politicians like these have garnered a lot of attention in recent weeks, with US President Donald Trump warning of “radical left communists” and calling El-Sayed a jihadist. But they are outliers. Most of the Democratic lawmakers who were swept to power in the blue wave of this week’s midterms are moderates."}],[{"start":47.7,"text":"The temper of the newcomers is exemplified by Roy Cooper, the first Democrat elected to the US Senate from North Carolina in 18 years. He is a mainstream Democratic politician who prides himself on his ability to reach across the aisle."}],[{"start":70.03,"text":"“I’m not a socialist and I’m not a rightwing Republican, OK,” Cooper, a former two-term governor of the “Tar Heel State”, told tobacco farmers at one campaign stop last month. “But I’ll work with anybody to try to make stuff cost less.”"}],[{"start":76.08,"text":"Seasoned Democrats say they have always been a big-tent party: the tent is simply a lot bigger now. “The more seats they win, the more debate they’ll have internally,” said Justin Goodman, former communications director for Chuck Schumer when he was Senate majority leader. “But ultimately . . . they will all coalesce around getting things done.”"}],[{"start":null,"text":"

"}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":94.96,"text":"Washington has had its fair share of unconventional lawmakers. The 118th Congress, from 2023 to 2025, will be remembered for Maga provocateurs such as Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert as well as for George Santos, the Republican expelled for faking his CV."}],[{"start":112.72,"text":"Then there were the hardline “Tea Party” Republicans who swept into Congress in the midterms of 2010 and injected a new spirit of ultra-partisan antagonism into US politics."}],[{"start":122.76,"text":"The 120th Congress marks an equally striking break with the past. Both chambers are now set for their highest turnover in decades after huge numbers of incumbents either did not seek re-election or lost their primaries or their actual election races."}],[{"start":137.48,"text":"That high churn rate has delivered a flurry of firsts. The Senate will have its first-ever Muslim person in El-Sayed, its first Native American woman in Peggy Flanagan of Minnesota and its first openly gay man in Chris Pappas of New Hampshire."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":153.44,"text":"Democrats will also be a younger cohort than their Republican colleagues, a difference personified by Melat Kiros of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), who was born in Ethiopia and is the first Gen Z woman to be elected to Congress."}],[{"start":167.48,"text":"Kiros was one of a clutch of leftist candidates from Minnesota to Michigan to Maine leading insurgent campaigns based on populist rallying cries like “Medicare for all”, more affordable housing and cutting all military aid to Israel."}],[{"start":181.44,"text":"But the progressives were largely running in states that were reliably Democratic. The big story of this year’s elections was the middle-of-the-road Democrats winning in red states that Trump won in 2024 — politicians with much more moderate policy prescriptions than their firebrand compadres."}],[{"start":198.4,"text":"Lucas Holtz, senior political adviser at centrist Democratic think-tank Third Way, said some 34 moderate Democrats won House districts previously held by Republicans this year — a huge haul."}],[{"start":219.88,"text":"“The majority-makers were mainstream and centre-left Democrats,” he said. “And they overperformed and flipped red and purple blue, especially in seats that have been moving further and further away from the Democrats over the past decade.”"}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":223.36,"text":"It was the same in the Senate: six of the seven Democrats who won Senate seats previously occupied by Republicans were from the centre-left of the party, people like Adam Hamilton, a prominent United Methodist pastor who won in traditionally Republican Kansas as an “independent-minded Democrat dedicated to leading from the centre”."}],[{"start":242.36,"text":"Or James Talarico, the first Democrat to win a Texas Senate seat since 1988, who promised to secure the US border, backed an all-of-the-above energy policy and came out against transgender athletes playing in girls’ sports."}],[{"start":256.44,"text":"Asked last month if he wanted to turn Texas blue, he said he wanted to represent all 31mn Texans, regardless of party, adding: “I think the best colour for Texas is purple.”"}],[{"start":266.68,"text":"There was an important message there, said Holtz. “You can run as inspirational, authentic candidates against the status quo of the party and you can overperform by huge margins,” he said. “And you don’t have to run to the left in order to get there.”"}],[{"start":281.36,"text":"The flipside of the strong showing by moderates in red states is the relative underperformance of progressives in traditionally blue ones. Leftist Senate candidates in Minnesota, Maine and Michigan did not win as many votes as more moderate Democrats in the same states."}],[{"start":297.2,"text":"El-Sayed, for example, won his Senate race by 7 percentage points but trailed the Democratic candidate for Michigan governor, Jocelyn Benson, by about two points. Similarly, progressives Troy Jackson in Maine and Flanagan in Minnesota did not do as well as the two Democratic gubernatorial candidates in their respective states."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":317.04,"text":"Keith Stern, a veteran Democratic strategist who served as former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s director of floor operations, said Democratic caucuses in both the House and Senate will run the full gamut from moderate to ultraliberal, “but the majorities are going from the centre”."}],[{"start":332.8,"text":"Stern, now a Washington-based lobbyist, said he also expected the more radical freshmen to moderate their views once they are installed in Washington."}],[{"start":340.96,"text":"“Congress works different than the campaign trail,” he said. “When they come in, they will be legislators and not just candidates, and they’re going to have to work across the aisle.”"}],[{"start":350.74,"text":"The big Democratic majority in the House is a relief for Hakeem Jeffries, now poised to become the first Black Speaker in US history. If it had been much smaller, he would have been beholden to lawmakers like Chevalier and other members of the DSA."}],[{"start":365.32,"text":"But with the Democrats now projected to have a majority of 77 seats in the House, he is unlikely to become a hostage to the Democratic Socialists."}],[{"start":373.74,"text":"It is a similar situation in the Senate, where the Democrats now hold 54 of the chamber’s 100 seats, with two races still undecided. By way of contrast, in the first two years of Joe Biden’s administration the party only controlled an evenly divided Senate thanks to vice-president Kamala Harris’s casting vote."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":392.56,"text":"Yet many expect Democrats to maintain a high degree of internal cohesion despite their ideological differences."}],[{"start":398.32,"text":"Goodman, who now works at Washington-based public affairs and crisis communications firm SKDK, said there would be plenty of internal debate and DSA lawmakers would occasionally “vote against things that they deem too moderate”."}],[{"start":411.92,"text":"But he insisted that all the newly elected Democrats agree on certain key issues, chief among them the need to end the war on Iran, investigate alleged corruption in Trump’s entourage and reverse cuts to Medicaid, the government health insurance programme for low-income Americans."}],[{"start":427.6,"text":"“Ultimately they’re all there because they believe government can be a force for good,” he said. “They see why they were elected and what happened. And they know what they need to do.”"}],[{"start":441.6,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1794117841_6817.mp3"}