Pramila Jayapal on Biden’s Fragile Coalition

The Political Scene | The New Yorker

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🗓️ 22 January 2024

⏱️ 31 minutes

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Summary

Pramila Jayapal, a Democratic representative and the leader of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, has been sounding the alarm about President Joe Biden’s reëlection prospects. She fears that the fragile coalition that won him the White House in 2020—which included suburban swing voters, people of color, and younger, progressive-leaning constituents—is “fractured” over issues like immigration and Biden’s support for Israel’s war in Gaza. Gaza in particular “is just a very difficult issue, because we don’t all operate from the same facts,” Jayapal tells David Remnick. “It is probably the most complex issue I have had to deal with in Congress. And I certainly didn’t come to Congress to deal with this issue.” But Jayapal sees a longer-term problem facing the Democratic Party. “The problem I think with a lot of my own party is we are very late to populist ideas,” she says. “The two biggest things people talk to me about are housing and child care. They saw that we had control of the House, the Senate, and the White House—and we didn’t get that done. And I can explain till the cows come home about the filibuster . . . but what people feel is the reality.” Of the political struggle that accompanied the President’s Build Back Better plan, she thinks, “A road or a bridge is extremely important, but if people can’t get out of the house, or they don’t have a house, then it’s not going to matter.”

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0:42.5	Yeah, eBay. Things people love.
0:49.3	This is the political scene, and I'm David Remnick.
1:04.8	In every modern American political party, there's tension between its centrist tendencies and its outer edges of things, between those who tend toward moderation and compromise,
1:10.6	and those who continue
1:12.0	fighting over principle, an issue, or resentment.
1:16.3	This tension has momentarily disappeared in the Republican Party, where Donald Trump and
1:21.6	his maga populism so dominate the party that center-right leaders like Mitt Romney have been eclipsed.
1:29.0	But the picture in the Democratic Party is somewhat different.
1:32.7	The fissure between centrist and progressives is widening.
1:37.1	In 2020, Joe Biden won over the great majority of progressives and younger voters from the left of the party.
1:43.0	But many of those voters now seem
1:45.5	to be disenchanted. And the party leadership fears that they could sit out the 2024 election.
1:52.1	The war in Gaza is one issue that is driving a particularly deep wedge. And it's not crazy to think
1:58.2	that this issue, along with the candidates' age, perception of the
	...

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