By Yasmeen Abutaleb, Nolan D. McCaskill and Richard Cowan
WASHINGTON, Nov 5 (Reuters) – Democrats are framing their sweeping midterm victory as a mandate for change, but already disagree over how far voters want them to go.
Beyond broad agreement on tackling “affordability,” Democrats disagree over whether voters also gave them license to aggressively investigate President Donald Trump and his family, pursue impeachment or embrace progressive priorities such as government-run “Medicare for All” healthcare.
This week, consensus emerged on a handful of big-ticket items Democrats aim to pursue once the new Congress convenes in January: making Obamacare health plans more affordable, reversing some of Trump’s cuts to Medicaid, the government health insurance program for the poor, and ending his unpopular tariffs and the war in Iran.
But deep fault lines remain within the party in the wake of Tuesday’s decisive results, which ushered in a class of more traditional, centrist candidates as well as a new class of progressives who railed against the Democratic Party establishment.
Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer celebrated the victory as a “generational” realignment, but also issued a warning that his party does not have a blank check to pursue legislation that goes beyond Americans’ appetites.
“These voters did not give us the majority so we can do whatever we want,” he said at a press conference on Wednesday.
He and Hakeem Jeffries, who is on track to become the speaker of the House in January, stressed that fixing America’s “affordability crisis” is Democrats’ top priority.
“I haven’t had a single member of the House Democratic Caucus talk to me about impeachment,” Jeffries said in response to a reporter’s question about Trump.
A MANDATE FOR ‘MEDICARE FOR ALL’ OR NOT?
Many Democrats viewed Tuesday’s political earthquake as a stunning repudiation of Trump and believe voters responded to their relentless focus on affordability.
But throughout the campaign, Democratic strategists and campaign officials cautioned that simply running against Trump was not enough and urged candidates to offer voters a policy agenda of their own.
Healthcare costs emerged as a major issue, particularly after Republicans let pandemic-era enhanced Obamacare subsidies lapse last year. That caused premiums to rise more than 50% and forced millions of people to drop their health plans just months before Election Day.
Democratic leaders believe extending the Obamacare subsidies and reversing Medicaid cuts could attract some Republican support and would be difficult for Trump to veto. But many Democrats believe the party needs to go further and begin taking steps toward “Medicare for All,” which would replace all or most private health insurance and which has long been a lightning rod in the party.
Incoming House freshman Randy Villegas, a progressive who flipped a Republican seat in California, said there’s danger in doing too little on big issues such as healthcare.
“We have to be willing to offer people a vision for something more,” he said at a virtual press conference for incoming members who flipped competitive seats. “And to me, that means fighting for things like universal healthcare.”
ACCOUNTABILITY FOR ‘CORRUPTION’
Democratic leaders have not disclosed their plans for the Congress that convenes the first week of January, but interviews with both new and returning members found agreement on accountability for Trump and reining in corporate money in politics.
US Senator Chris Van Hollen, a Maryland Democrat who has hinted at a possible 2028 presidential campaign, said Democrats need to simultaneously advance multiple goals, including holding the administration “accountable for its gross corruption,” trying to end the Iran war and uniting behind an aggressive economic agenda targeted at working-class Americans.
He said in an interview with Reuters that Democrats should not be overly cautious in going after corporations, billionaires and special interests that voters blame for making it harder to get by.
But divisions are likely to emerge over how best to address growing wealth inequality and corporations that have raised their prices on consumers. Van Hollen and many other Democrats have supported a tax on billionaires. But a California ballot measure that would have imposed a one-time 5% tax on the net worth of billionaires failed on Tuesday in a heavily Democratic-leaning state and faced opposition from Governor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat and another potential 2028 presidential candidate.
US Senator-elect James Talarico, a Texas Democrat, who was specifically targeted by $230 million in campaign spending from the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, said in a victory speech on Wednesday that the party’s mandate ought to include campaign finance reforms to get “big money out of politics.”
INTEREST GROUPS PUSH IMMIGRATION REFORM, MINIMUM WAGE
On the day after the watershed election, interest groups already were laying out the agendas they will take to Capitol Hill next year.
A group that includes labor unions, immigration advocates such as America’s Voice and the Latino Community Foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union produced data it said demonstrated minorities’ strong support for Democrats in Tuesday’s elections, after many moved toward Republicans in 2024.
Among the top concerns of minority voters were restrictions on the use of force by federal immigration officers, an increase in the federal minimum wage to $17 per hour, from the current $7.25 set in 2009, and universal childcare.
“It’s a stunning result in its sweep and scope,” Van Hollen said in summing things up. “Midterms are a referendum on the party in power, but I also think this was a plea for a new kind of politics.”
(Reporting by Nolan D. McCaskill, Yasmeen Abutaleb and Richard Cowan; Editing by Michael Learmonth and Howard Goller)
