This is the 30th year of the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC), but in another sense, today is the first day. It’s the first day Washington has seen a coherent, organized coalition in Congress wielding power from the left. And it has the congressional leadership confused.
In the past, whenever the Democratic leadership needed a vote on some compromised piece of whatever, they would lean on the Progressive Caucus with hackneyed phrases like “half a loaf is better than nothing” or “don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good,” and caucus members would give in. There wasn’t much of a strategy to keep the caucus together and voting as a bloc, to force their ideas into the conversation. There wasn’t much of a strategy, period.
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