Ayanna Pressley and Abigail Spanberger on the Rift in the Democratic Party

The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

Politics, Arts, News, Wnyc, Books, David, Storytelling, Society & Culture, Yorker, New, Remnick

4.2 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 11 December 2020

⏱️ 20 minutes

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Summary

In November, when the Democratic Party lost seats in the House and a hoped-for victory in the Senate fizzled, centrist Democrats were quick to blame left-leaning progressives. Rhetoric about democratic socialism and defunding the police, they said, had scared away moderate voters and was costing the Party its influence. David Remnick speaks with two prominent House members on opposite sides of this debate: Abigail Spanberger, a centrist whose caustic comments about progressive rhetoric were leaked to the press; and Ayanna Pressley, one of the four progressives known as “the Squad,” who insists that “impact,” rather than compromise, is the best way to sway voters.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.
0:09.5	Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick.
0:13.0	In his campaign for the presidency, Joe Biden played up his long career as a centrist, a champion of bipartisanship.
0:23.7	At the same time, he advanced an agenda that, on paper anyway, was in many ways more progressive than Barack Obama's. It was not an easy balancing act at all,
0:30.5	but Biden managed to unite the Democratic Party and beat Donald Trump. But while the Democrats
0:36.4	won back the White House, the Democrats also lost
0:39.8	a dozen seats in the House of Representatives. Centrists in the party were quick to lay the blame
0:45.1	on progressives. Terms like democratic socialism and defunding the police, they said, had scared
0:51.0	away moderate voters. Progressives, on the other hand, say that the energy that they
0:56.2	brought to the campaign is exactly what pushed Donald Trump out of the White House. So today I'm
1:01.9	going to talk to two members of Congress who are on opposing sides of this debate. Ianna Presley,
1:07.5	who represents a district in the Boston area, and Abigail Spanberger, who was
1:12.3	just re-elected in Virginia. When Spanberger won in 2018, it was the first time a Democrat had
1:17.8	taken her district, the Virginia 7th, in decades. So let's begin at the beginning.
1:25.0	Absolutely. You had a conference call with the Democratic Caucus,
1:29.2	and you were not happy.
1:31.3	You were not happy with the use of the word socialism,
1:35.0	democratic or otherwise,
1:36.2	and certainly not happy with the term defund the police
1:39.7	because you were convinced that it made your political life perilous
1:44.8	and the political lives of a lot of members perilous
1:49.3	and may have hurt the Democratic Party this time around.
	...

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