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Four freshman representatives who made headlines during their first year in Congress are touting their vision of turning the Congressional Progressive Caucus into a "new kind of centrism."

Reps. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York have promoted "Medicare for all," a federal $15 minimum wage, and social justice issues as cornerstones of a policy platform that helped elect both House Democrats in 2018.

We have the support of the majority of the public for the policies that we advocate for. And so we have to speak from a place of authority and power, Omar told BuzzFeed.

Omar and Ocasio-Cortez make up half of "the squad," a group of four young female Democrats who have attacked President Trump while pushing the Democratic Party further left on several policy issues.

The group also includes Reps. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, who was dragged out of a 2016 Trump rally, promised to "impeach the motherf---er," and posted an Instagram video cheering the impeachment of Trump.

The group has challenged the moderate core of the Democratic Party and endorsed liberal candidates running against Democratic-held seats in Congress.

The Congressional Progressive Caucus co-chairwoman, Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington, who referred to Trump as a "combative racist" in 2019, said, "progressives are just the first to the best ideas."

Their growing stature comes, in part, due to their solidarity. The thing that gives the caucus power is that you can operate as a bloc vote in order to get things done, Ocasio-Cortez told podcast The Dig.

[It is] the nature of being a progressive caucus member you're maybe out there on issues first before it's hit the mainstream, added caucus co-chairman Rep. Mark Pocan of Wisconsin.

House Democrats slammed Pocan in early 2019 after he posted a now-deleted tweet that accused the moderate Problem Solvers Caucus of being the "Child Abuse Caucus.

Young Democrats, however, support the combative shift in tone and are eager to see more liberal policy ideas adopted by the Democratic Party. After a recent tour in support of presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, supporters labeled Ocasio-Cortez a "national voice" and suggested she run for president in the future.

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Ilhan Omar and AOC plan to make Progressive Caucus a 'new kind of centrism' - Washington Examiner

Progressive candidates challenging Democratic members of Congress in primaries are increasingly making foreign policy a central theme of their campaigns in the wake of President Donald Trumps killing of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani.

At least five House challengers and one progressive running in a competitive primary for an open Senate seat have used the assassination and the questions its raised about Congress power to authorize war and the United States role in the world to distinguish themselves from their more moderate Democratic opponents.

The accusation that sitting Democratic lawmakers have provided insufficient oversight of Trumps foreign policy has become significant in immigration attorney Jessica Cisneros run against Texas Rep. Henry Cuellar; former middle school principal Jamaal Bowmans run against House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Eliot Engel of New York; law professor Suraj Patels rematch against Rep. Carolyn Maloney of New York; Holyoke, Massachusetts, Mayor Alex Morses effort to unseat House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal of Massachusetts; and nonprofit executive Melanie DArrigos run against Long Island Rep. Tom Suozzi.

Kentucky state Rep. Charles Booker, a long-shot candidate for the Democratic Senate nomination in the Bluegrass State, has also sought to distinguish himself from military veteran and establishment favorite Amy McGrath with a firmer stance against Trumps intervention.

Waleed Shahid, a spokesperson for the left-wing group Justice Democrats, which is backing three out of the five primary challengers, sees Democrats foreign policy stances as a potentially fruitful campaign topic.

On the presidential level and on the congressional level, there is a real fight on the direction of the Democratic Party on foreign policy, especially in the Trump era, Shahid said. Trump is being impeached for manipulating foreign policy to benefit himself. So theres a lot of energy in the Democratic electorate to hold him more accountable.

Veronica Cardenas / ReutersDemocrat Jessica Cisneros, an immigration attorney challenging Texas Rep. Henry Cuellar, is making an issue out of Cuellar's support for the killing of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani.

For some challengers, though, the case is more straightforward than for others.

Cuellar, who has one of the most conservative records in his partys caucus, registered no objection to Trumps move to kill Soleimani, calling it a necessary step in combating the threat of Iran.

It was the perfect opening for Cisneros, the challenger, who has made Cuellars common ground with Trump a key talking point. For the purposes of this particular argument, she has also underscored Cuellars relianceover the course of his careeron campaign contributions from military contractors.

Henry Cuellar is picking corporate special interests over his constituents and proving once again hes Trumps favorite Democrat, she said in a Monday statement.

But other Democratic incumbents have at least questioned the wisdom of Trumps actions, raising the possibility that, as with impeachment, their progressive challengers will become victims of their own success.

The threat of a progressive primary challenge has likely made vulnerable Democrats more eager to criticize Trumps conduct, which ironically deprives those same progressive primary challengers of a neater attack line against the incumbents they are taking on.

Instead, many progressive challengers are reduced to casting doubt on incumbents judgment based on their past actions. Specifically, challengers are seizing on whether their opponents voted in 2002 to authorize the Iraq War; opposed then-President Barack Obamas 2015 nuclear agreement with Iran; or voted for the final, bipartisan version of the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act a military spending bill from which lawmakers had stripped provisions reining in the presidents authority to wage war with Iran.

What we must demand is not a race to war, but a diplomatic solution, Patel, the law professor running for a second time to unseat Maloney, said in a Saturday statement. Rep. Carolyn Maloney has a history of supporting reckless Middle East policy and aligning herself with the foreign policy of this president.

The reelection campaign of Maloney who indeed voted for the Iraq War, opposed the Iran nuclear deal and voted for the 2020 defense spending bill declined HuffPosts request for a response to Patels accusation.

Morse, Neals challenger, blasted Neal for approving the compromise defense spending bill and for failing to lead on the reassertion of congressional authority in matters of war and peace. Neal voted against authorizing the Iraq War and supported the Iran nuclear deal, but also voted for the original Authorization for Use of Military Force, which, over 18 years later, remains the sole legal basis for the entire war on terror across multiple countries. (California Rep. Barbara Lee was the sole member of Congress to vote against the original AUMF in September 2001.)

Neal has had opportunities throughout his 30 years in Washington to prevent what happened [on Thursday night] and he failed to do so, Morse told HuffPost.

SAUL LOEB/Getty ImagesHouse Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Eliot Engel, a New York Democrat, limited his exposure to progressive attacks with a vote against the 2020 defense spending bill.

Neals campaign said the influential Massachusetts congressman had supported the NDAA because it included a compromise to save some 200 jobs at a manufacturing facility in Springfield and major funding for military bases in the Western Massachusetts district.

With Middle East foreign policy, as with many others, Alex Morse appears to be remarkably ill-informed about national and international issues as they relate to Western Mass, Neal campaign spokeswoman Kate Norton said.

DArrigo has also focused on the 2020 NDAA in her bid to dislodge Suozzi, a business-friendly House sophomore.

In a statementabout Soleimanis killing, Suozzi had urged Trump to work with Congress and U.S. allies.

DArrigo quote-tweeted the statement on Twitter with a rebuke against Suozzis vote for the 2020 NDAA.

You cant both criticize AND enable his actions, she wrote to Suozzi. Continually playing both sides will not keep Americans safe, it will only embolden an increasingly rogue GOP and POTUS.

At least one Democratic incumbent, however Engel went so far as voting against the annual defense spending bill, making it even harder to pin him down.

Engel, who is liberal on domestic policy, has long been one of his partys more hawkish members on foreign affairs. He voted in 2002 to authorize the Iraq War a vote for which he has subsequently expressed regret and in 2015, opposed then-President Barack Obamas agreement with the Iranian government restricting its development of nuclear weapons.

Engels position was nuanced, however, even before Bowman and schoolteacher Andom Ghebreghiorgis announced bids against him in 2019. Essentially from the moment Trump took office in 2017, Engel opposed withdrawing from the Iran nuclear agreement, notwithstanding his opposition to the accord that Obama had passed.

In the current majority-Democratic Congress, though, with serious primary challenges against him underway, Engel has made a particular point of aligning with his partys peace camp. He co-sponsored California Rep. Ro Khannas amendment to the annual defense spending bill forbidding military hostilities with Iran without congressional authorization. And along with just 40 other Democrats, he voted down the final bill because the bipartisan compromise legislation omitted the amendment.

So when Bowman warned Engel on Twitter that the grassroots will be pushing for the adoption of the standalone version of Khannas legislation requiring congressional authorization for war with Iran, Engel had a retort handy. Glad you agree with my bill, he wrote, signing the tweet Eliot to signify that he, rather than his staff, had written it. (Bowman shot back with a recounting of Engels support for the Iraq War and opposition to the Iran nuclear deal.)

Democratic leadership in the House has already taken steps to shore up its moderate members at the expense of both more liberal sitting members and progressive primary challengers.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California has tapped Rep. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, a moderate freshman and former intelligence analyst, to lead the introduction of legislation later this week that would force Trump to cease hostilities with Iran within 30 days if Congress does not take additional action. Even if the legislation is identical to Khannas, it would effectively deprive Khanna and his ideological allies of credit for the provision and obscure responsibility for his amendment being jettisoned from the final defense spending bill.

Cuellars campaign would not say how Cuellar, the most hawkish of the embattled incumbents, plans to cast his vote on such a bill. But he may benefit from Texas open primary system, which allows independents and Republicans to register as Democrats to cast a vote in the March 3 primary.

His campaigns combative responses to Cisneros may be aimed at more conservative primarygoers.

Cisneros can put out a press release of word salad, but the bottom line is that our opponent opposes the targeting of a terrorist who directed and sanctioned attacks on U.S. troops, said Cuellar campaign spokesman Colin Strother, adding that Cisneros is standing with Iran.

Even with a more favorable set of facts for progressives, though, its likely that foreign policy would be a challenging issue to run on.

Democratic voters in general do not have well-developed foreign policy views, Michigan State political scientist Matt Grossmann told HuffPost last week. They are only able to interpret events in terms of what political elites say.

Shahid of Justice Democrats maintains that its worth a shot, particularly given Obamas popularity and the degree to which Trumps brinksmanship stems from his insistence on jettisoning the Iran deal Obamas signature foreign policy achievement.

Siding with President Trump on an issue that could bring the nation to the brink of war is not something you want to be associated with at all in the Democratic primary, he said.

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Trumps Foreign Policy Is A Growing Point Of Contention In Democratic Primaries - HuffPost

Jon1979(View Comment):

The current Virginia gun control kerfuffle is an interesting preview of the situation progressives want, but arent quite sure how theyre going to get there in the real world. The Democrats know when Jan. 1 rolls around they want to take their first steps on banning guns on the way to gun confiscation, once they control the legislature in Virigina. But theyve already had the majority of the counties in the state either voice opposition or go through the Sanctuary County movement in declaring any state action to be in violation of Second Amendment rights.

In fantasy world, Gov. Northam sends out his robotic Imperial Storm Troopers and they simply do as theyre told and seize all the illegal weapons. Real world is a little messier, in that the governor is going to have to either order the removal of sheriffs and/or county officials, or mandate that Richmond put the financial screws to any county in non-compliance, and in either case, even if you got the top officials in those counties to go along with the plan, the lower level people in the law enforcement departments (or the National Guard) might not comply.

So how do the Elites tame the Savages? Up in New York State, Andrew Cuomos been content to virtue signal much of his draconian gun control law for downstate voters, while not taking it to the mat with the upstate sheriffs and voters/gun owners who oppose it. Northam may do the same thing, but more than any state other than possibly Maryland, Virginia Democrats power comes out of the federal mindset of the Washington D.C. area i.e., lots of the same people and mindsets that have brought you the past three years of the Trump investigation/impeachment farce live in Virginia, and may want their governor and legislators to use the same type of harball tactics they learned during the Obama years in D.C. on the non-complying gun-owning citizens in Virginia. Thats when the push-back really could get serious.

Excellent analysis and well written statements.

Hopefully the governor and his staff wont be as smart as Gov Jerry Brown was in Calif.

Brown went after segments within segments of the gun owning population. So hey every body: dont worry we will only take your guns if you are a veteran with a mental illness or a prescription for anti depressants.

Then a year later: dont worry we only want your guns if you have a drug conviction, even a misdemeanor drug conviction.

So since the whole populace of gun owners wasnt attacked all at once, Brown got away with more confiscation than he should have.

Read more:
Progressives, Fear the Return of the American Savage - Ricochet.com

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'Dithering' Over Medication Abortion Latest Evidence to Progressives of Buttigieg Reversing Previously-Held Position - Common Dreams

But the overarching theme of his speech, and the argument for his candidacy, I heard over and over from people who were there, was change. He could make that case partly because of something his friends had called The Proposal.

I remember there being a faction, said Heather Woodruff Grizzle, naming Sitaraman and Warrenand Joe Green, too, the gregarious, Hawaiian shirt-wearing roommate of then unknown Mark Zuckerberg. And then there was Buttigieg. Peter, Ganesh and Previn came forward with The Proposal, a student who also was heavily involved with the IOP told me.

This proposal advocated essentially for more open, less cliquish elections and ramped-up student say-so and power within the structure of the IOPless busywork and fewer administrative chores, more reading and writing and assisting staff and professors on research. The manifesto, which had circulated to acclaim from some but the exasperation of others, contributed to the reputations of its authors. Ganesh, Previn and Joe were all sort of agents of change, so to speak, said Jason Semine. And Buttigieg, I was told, was with them.

As much as he was aligned, though, with the ringleaders of this reform effort, Buttigieg wasnt seen as an agitator. He was lauded by nearly everybody at the IOP, then and now, for his deliberative, understated nature. He was, though, a believer in a more head-down inside game. In the run-up to the vote for leadership of SAC, Buttigieg displayed his talent for that inside game by approaching Seminethe forum committee chair who by virtue of that role had a relationship with a lot of underclassmen. In other words: persuadables. And he wasnt hiding the ball here, Semine said of Buttigieg. He was pretty clear: Hey, Ive got this election, I need to drum up votes For Semine, who knew Buttigieg well, it was unexpected, and pretty savvy, he said.

This, people thought, was pretty savvy, too: When it came time to pick a running mate, Buttigieg pivoted away from the lefty, rabble-rousing connotations of The Proposal. Betsy Sykes was a Republican. The cross-party-lines pairing wasnt that unusualthese were nonpartisan elections, and Tuckers vice president was Woodruff Grizzle, also a Republicanbut what else Sykes brought was her status as the chair of the fellows committee, another one of the primary leadership feeders. Having Betsy as his running mate I think very much helped, said Jonathan Chavez. Now, in the rough contours of this tight-knit electorate, Buttigieg had the votes to his leftplus more than he would have had to his right.

Buttigieg, too, was liked by the staff. The adult professionals who ran the operations of the IOP didnt have SAC votes. But thats not to say their approval didnt carry some weight. And Buttigieg could be a measured intermediary between the two groups.

You had all these really smart kids around you who had every idea in the world, and he was always somebody I could go talk to, to try and get a good read on what was accurate and what was not accurate in terms of what we were likely to face.

- Dan Glickman, former Kansas congressman and director of Institute of Politics in early 2000s

You had all these really smart kids around you who had every idea in the world, and he was always somebody I could go talk to, to try and get a good read on what was accurate and what was not accurate in terms of what we were likely to face, Dan Glickman, the former congressman from Kansas who by then was the director of the IOP, told me. Cathy and I used to talk about that, said Glickman, referring to Cathy McLaughlin, then the executive director of the IOP, now the executive director for the Biden Institute. Whenever we had an issue, shed say, Well, go talk to Pete.

Buttigiegs opponent in the election, meanwhile, was Caroline Adler, kind of like a Hillary Clinton type, said Houseintelligent, industrious, ultra-prepared. Tracy Flick, said Chavez. Since Harvard, Adler, now Adler Morales, has worked for Clinton (on her 2008 presidential campaign and in the State Department) and for Michelle Obama (in the White House and still as her communications director). In December 2002, she was the favorite going in, Tucker said. But Buttigieg won, and Adler, according to a close friend, was devastated. Her allies stewed about unjust gender dynamics at work. She was ambitious, and showed it, and that was and remains, they said, dicier for a woman than for a man. Buttigieg, they said, along with pretty much everybody else I talked to for this story, was equally ambitious. He was just more subtle about it.

His first full month in his new position, at a forum with Senator Ted Kennedy, Buttigieg again approached the standing mic. Forum regulars had come to expect from Buttigieg a certain something.

I was responsible for a thousand graduate students, said Joseph McCarthy, a Kennedy School dean at the time, but I still noticed Peter, which is rare. He would ask very searching questions and yet do it very respectfully and thoughtfully and seemed older than his years.

You could hear the commas and the semicolons, said McCarthys wife, Marina McCarthy, a Democratic consultant.

Sen. Edward Kennedy during the Sept. 2003 dedication of the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum of Public Affairs at the Harvard JFK School of Government. | Getty Images

Here Buttigieg faced Kennedy. It feels like a lot of your colleagues have adopted a posture of being for whatever the Republicans are for, only less, he said (around 51:30). The tax cutsjust a smaller oneand the warjust maybe not quite as quick as the Republican war. And then there are voices like your own, which are more forceful in opposition. I wonder if you see this as a split in the Democratic Party, and how you think, politically speaking, in the next few years your partys going to sort out what it thinks the meaning of opposition is.

Well, Kennedy responded, I would certainly expect that those differences would be clearerI think they are getting cleareras time goes on, certainly with regards to the involvement in Iraq.

That certainly was true for Buttigieg. Opposition to him on this front meant standing up and speaking out. In the middle of March, a week before the invasion of Iraq, he gave a speech to some 350 people in front of the Science Center at an Emergency Anti-War Rally.

Major events during Buttigieg's junior year at Harvard: the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and the fall of Saddam Hussein. | Getty Images

Bush wants us to remember American security but forget that there might be consequences to American security if we alienate all of our allies, Buttigieg said, according to coverage in the Harvard Crimson, the student newspaper. He pointed to the signature spire of nearby Memorial Church, where names of alums killed in action are carved in marble. They remind us of a time, he said, when we had to take up arms against another nation, and there may be a day we have to again, but that day isnt today.

It was a riskparticularly, perhaps, for anybody at all interested in a future run for elected office. It was not a consensus view on the campus, Semine said. A lot of our peers shared it, but it was not consensus.

What it was, too, was another something neweven for the people who knew Buttigieg the best.

That was probably the first time I saw him speak in public, roommate Pete Schwartzstein said. And he definitely took on a different personalike a very commanding tone.

The thing he could do, which most of the sort of intellectuals at Harvard couldnt, was that if he ever needed to give a speech, or summon himself for a public moment, he was just extraordinarily good at it.

- Brian Goldsmith, friend of Buttigieg at Harvard

He was able to kind of straddle two worlds, said Brian Goldsmith, a friend who was a year younger than Buttigieg (and popped up the other day on his list of bundlers). One world was the very academic, intellectual world but then the other thing he could do, which most of the sort of intellectuals at Harvard couldnt, was that if he ever needed to give a speech, or summon himself for a public moment, he was just extraordinarily good at it.

It was, thought Previn Warren, a watershed moment.

The summer before his senior year, Buttigieg was a research assistant for Harvard Kennedy School professor David King for a paper that would run in a book called Lights, Camera, Campaign! When I look back on the students I have had, King said when I met with him recently in his office, he stands out as one of a handful. Like its a very, very, very small number. Truly outstanding. Really something. And you knew it within the first few days of spending time with him. The paper Buttigieg helped King with dealt with Gores campaign in 2000 and specifically a whistle-stop bus-and-boat trip he took down the Mississippi River. Buttigieg crunched numbers from polls and campaign finance data that showed it helped Gore win Iowa and Wisconsin. Kind of interesting, King said with a smile, that we wrote a paper about traveling through Iowa and generating votes.

On and around campus that fall, Buttigieg and his roommates downed bottles of Sam Adams while rooting for the still-cursed Red Sox as they almost beat the hated Yankees in the baseball playoffs. At the same time, Buttigieg and his IOP mates followed along intently as Democrats mounted runs for president.

Onstage at a 2004 Democratic primary debate: former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, retired Gen. Wesley Clark, Al Sharpton, Sen. John Kerry, Sen. John Edwards, Sen. Joe Lieberman and Rep. Dennis Kucinich. At right: Kerry and President Bush shake hands during a debate in the fall of 2004. | Getty Images

That years accelerating Democratic primary was not dissimilar to this years, a big, unwieldy fieldalbeit with only nine candidatesvying to oust an Oval Office occupant who had lost the popular vote and was seen by party aspirants and their supporters as inept and unfit. Buttigieg watched all the candidates come through the IOP for televised sit-downs with MSNBCs Chris Matthews, from John Edwards to John Kerry to Al Sharpton to Dick Gephardt to Howard Dean. Buttigeg asked Gephardt a question about the youth vote. He lamented in conversations with King in his office the mealy-mouthed way in which Kerry had talked about his faith in a debate. In spite of that, though, and even though his stance on the war might have made him more simpatico with Dean than with Kerry, Buttigieg opted nonetheless to support the Massachusetts senator.

He was liberal, Brian Goldsmith said, but he was an institutionalist. And he was pragmatic. And I do remember him thinking Kerry would be a much better choice for Democrats than Howard Dean in 2004.

In classrooms and libraries, Buttigieg worked to cap what would prove to be his Rhodes-worthy rsum, earning a perfect score on a project in professor Alyssa Goodmans class, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. The title of his project? Young People and Politics. Goodman remembers Buttigieg well. Very serious, she told me. Very disciplined.

Read more:
How Harvard Made Pete Buttigieg the Moderate That Progressives Love to Hate - POLITICO