On Tuesday, President Joe Biden spoke candidly in his first State of the Union address about the concerns many Americans are feeling about the “punishing” coronavirus pandemic, rising consumer prices, and an unstable world.
“I want you to know that we are going to be okay,” Biden told a weary nation. In a speech heavy on infrastructure numbers and supply chains, in which the president reassured moderates that “I am a capitalist,” Biden proposed an economic plan that would, in all likelihood, be a boon for working families across party lines.
There’s just one problem. Before Biden can hammer proposals like extending the Child Tax Credit and setting a $15 federal minimum wage into law, he’ll need to resolve the deep ideological rifts and simmering personality clashes currently paralyzing the Democratic Party. Without internal consensus—and the support of the party’s obstructionists in the Senate—Biden’s State of the Union proposals face the same grim fate as the Build Back Better agenda.
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For Democratic voters hopeful that 2022 would be the year the party’s feuding progressive and moderate wings came together—out of a shared self-interest in holding on to Democratic control in Congress, if nothing else—progressives’ State of the Union response made clear that the left isn’t ready to forgive the conservative Democrats still actively blocking Biden’s most popular proposals.
In a progressive State of the Union response for the Working Families Party, Rep. Rashida Tlaib condemned “two forces [that] stood in the way” of delivering on Biden’s campaign promises, “a Republican Party that serves only the rich, and just enough corporate-backed Democratic obstructionists to help them succeed.”
Tlaib also urged Biden to use his executive authority to speed up the pace of progress in Washington. “He can cancel student loan debt, which would be a lifeline for millions. He can ban federal fossil fuel leasing and direct federal agencies to reject permits for new fossil fuel projects…he can take action to break up pharmaceutical monopolies and make life saving medicines affordable.”
It isn’t new for factions within a political party to offer individualized responses to their president’s State of the Union; New York Rep. Jamaal Bowman delivered the WFP’s progressive response just last year. But it is rare to see a lawmaker publicly dragging her Capitol Hill colleagues, especially during a heated campaign season where morale and unity make the difference between retaining control of Congress and ushering in a Trumpist Republican restoration.
Moderate Democratic Rep. Josh Gottheimer, who just spent a year derailing Biden’s agenda in the House, was quick to criticize Tlaib’s decision to speak out. “It’s like keying your own car and slashing your own tires,” Gottheimer told Axios. But Gottheimer’s yearlong attempt to paint Tlaib and the House Progressive Caucus as party enemies doesn’t add up.
As Tlaib notes, it was progressives who spent much of the summer serving as Biden’s enforcers in the House. They, along with Speaker Nancy Pelosi, fought to keep Biden’s bipartisan infrastructure bill and Build Back Better agenda together as Gottheimer, moderate Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, and the GOP joined forces to gut as much of Biden’s agenda as possible. And progressives are still working with Biden to pass what remains of Build Back Better.
Let’s be perfectly clear: Tlaib isn’t wrong. Manchin and Sinema are menaces. Their self-serving obstructionism is a stumbling block not just for the Democratic Party, where they are out of step with the vast majority of the party’s base, but to a broader nation whose fair elections and voting rights are jeopardized by their situational embrace of the filibuster as the word of God. They have come to represent every cynical feeling about our federal government’s lack of interest in serving those it governs.
Manchin and Sinema are also not Biden’s fault, and most progressive lawmakers have maintained cordial relations with the White House, fighting with Biden to preserve as much of the Build Back Better framework as possible. But with one year of Biden’s presidency now gone and future Democratic control of Congress looking uncertain, the left is losing patience with Biden’s hesitancy to engage big issues like climate change and protecting abortion rights, both of which received only passing references.
“What you get with Rashida is the uncomfortable truth that Democrats don’t want to reckon with,” said UntilFreedom co-founder and progressive activist Linda Sarsour. “Our opposition isn’t just the GOP, it’s corporate-backed Democrats who put profits over people.”
“In the wake of the IPCC report and the Ukraine crisis, President Biden had an opportunity to frame his climate agenda as a way to defeat fossil fuel-funded autocrats,” said Max Berger, Editorial Director for the progressive media organization More Perfect Union. “Not doing so was a big missed opportunity.”
Democrats are facing nothing like the civil war that swept through the GOP in the wake of Trump’s humiliating 2020 loss. There, Republican leaders have censured and condemned Reps. Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney for daring to question Trump’s divine right to rule, while hailing the Jan. 6 insurrectionists as American patriots.
Comparatively, Democrats find themselves in a difficult but navigable situation. But in order to weather the political storms and reunite the party, Biden will need to acknowledge how deeply betrayed many Democratic voters feel by Manchin, Sinema, and the played-out idea of seeking consensus with a GOP that refuses to even acknowledge Biden as the legitimate president.
Time is running out to bring Democrats into alignment on what should be their primary mission: passing every piece of Biden’s agenda, either as standalone bills or attached to other legislation. If Biden can’t bring his unruly and frustrated party in line and provide lawmakers with tangible victories they can take home to voters this summer, he will have little hope of making progress against the entrenched, far-right fueled divisions that once again require encircling the U.S. Capitol in security fencing and heavily-armed protection. Left unchecked, that same division will rob Biden and Democrats of any hopes of pushing back against Trump’s increasingly authoritarian GOP.
