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Friday, November 19, 2021

POLITICO NIGHTLY: The candidate the Kamala-Pete buzz ignores

 


 
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BY SAM STEIN

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Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) arrives to a business meeting with the Senate Committee on Veteran Affairs on Capitol Hill.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) arrives to a business meeting with the Senate Committee on Veteran Affairs on Capitol Hill. | Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

BERNIE 2.0  Amid the glut of speculation about whether Kamala Harris or Pete Buttigieg is Joe Biden’s political heir, another important succession story in Democratic circles has gone almost entirely undiscussed: Who will inherit Bernie Sanders’ ideological mantle?

During the past two presidential cycles, the Vermont independent mounted captivating, extremely well-financed bids. He lost twice. But he reshaped the Democratic Party. The size and contents of Biden’s domestic agenda have been directly affected by Sandersism. He has compelled Democrats to embrace government intervention rather than hide their faith in it from public view.

But Sanders, like Biden, is old. No one in his orbit imagines him mounting a third run should Biden call it quits — something, to be clear, the president and his team have explicitly said he isn’t doing.

This has left a void in the party’s left wing. And it is causing anxiety among progressive operatives who believe Sanders’ great discovery was that, in the era of online politics, a presidential campaign was an effective tool to push unapologetic liberalism.

“Bernie was the first real progressive to play that role in a long time,” said Ari Rabin-Havt, the deputy campaign manager for Sanders’ 2020 campaign. “Bill Bradley was a good guy, but he wasn’t a progessive leader. Howard Dean represented the left in ’04, but he wasn’t a progressive leader. And, so, a lot of the time we’ve been looking at progressive leaders in presidential races who haven’t been progressive. That does raise the expectations that whoever fills that lane actually be a progressive.”

Ask veterans of Sanders’ world who they think could fill that lane, and you get a host of recognizable, but not necessarily national, names. The most common are a band of House progressives: Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D-Waah.), Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), Katie Porter (D-Calif.) and the members of “The Squad.”

But others imagine a new type of Bernie-ism that isn’t necessarily defined by Beltway influence.

“I think the next chapter is Bernie 2.0 in color,” said Chuck Rocha, a former union organizer who served as Sanders’ senior campaign adviser.

The next Sanders, as Rocha sees it, will follow the path laid out by one of Bernie’s major influences, Jesse Jackson, whose “rainbow coalition” presidential campaigns in 1984 and 1988 fused worker rights and multiculturalism into a potent political force.

Jackson had his missteps, including one fairly infamous one. But the Democratic Party also went into abject panic at the prospect of him winning. Rocha thinks the party’s in a new place now, having seen obvious slippage with white working-class and Hispanic voters. And he surmises that politicians like Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.), Nanette Barragán (D-Calif.) and Austin Council Member Greg Casar, a self-avowed Democratic socialist who is running for Congress, are the clearest embodiments of the Jackson vision.

“You are going to have some massive, massive changes happening in the next two or three years,” said Rocha. “The only way to really be successful has to be rooted in almost a Donald Trump/auto-worker/person of color working-class narrative of economic populism. This is what the Democrats have walked away from at their own peril and one where they are getting their ass handed to them.”

There is, of course, a massive, massive gap between running as an all-inclusive economic populist and mounting a successful Democratic presidential candidacy. As Rocha surveyed the coming generation of Democratic populists, he conceded a problem: They lack the political infrastructure to capitalize on the void Sanders will be leaving.

There are a few candidates who won’t have that problem. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) could choose to run again. Khanna has invested in list acquisition. And Porter is a dynamite low-dollar fundraiser and a grassroots star.

Perhaps more important, not everyone thinks having a currently unsophisticated operation would be that big a deal in three years. “If someone captures the imagination, then the infrastructure can be put in place,” said a prominent Democratic digital operative.

Still, there is one lawmaker who Rocha and several others said did have the ideological makeup and infrastructure already in place, and a Sanders connection to boot: Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), who turns 35 (the legal age to be president under the Constitution) on Oct. 13, 2024.

“Bernie is no different than when he was a crazy white-haired congressman,” said Rocha. “What legitimized him was when he could raise tens of millions of dollars. That made him real to every power broker in America. And no one beyond AOC has been able to do that.”

Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com . Or contact tonight’s author at sstein@politico.com, or on Twitter at @samstein.

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ON THE HILL

Dressed in a costume depicting the Build Back Better bill, Bob Hayes of the National Domestic Workers Alliance poses for photos with congressional staffers on Capitol Hill.

Dressed in a costume depicting the Build Back Better bill, Bob Hayes of the National Domestic Workers Alliance poses for photos with a congressional staffer on Capitol Hill. | Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

HERE COMES THE VOTE — The House is charging ahead on Biden’s expansive social spending bill , set to vote this evening after months of false starts on Democrats’ biggest agenda item.

The timing is seen by some as a bit of a Thanksgiving miracle, given many Democrats started the day doubting that the $1.7 trillion legislation would be finished in time for final passage today. But two sign-offs came late in the day — with key moderate holdouts privately sounding optimistic — allowing Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her team to plow ahead earlier than some in the caucus expected.

Congress’ nonpartisan scorekeeper has now delivered all of the data that moderates have demanded in order to vote, after initially predicting they would finish their analysis on Friday. Democrats also cleared another key hurdle today, receiving a necessary OK from the Senate parliamentarian that ensures the bill won’t run afoul of filibuster protections when it moves to the upper chamber.

Pelosi confirmed plans to vote tonight in a letter to Democrats, and then Rules Committee Chair Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) kicked off a hearing to tee up the bill for floor debate and a final vote.

 

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WHAT'D I MISS?

— Biden says WH is considering diplomatic boycott of Beijing Olympics: Biden said today the U.S. was weighing a diplomatic boycott of the Winter Olympics in Beijing, a move that proponents say would be a highly visible rebuke of the Chinese government and its human rights record.

— Iranian hackers charged with voter intimidation campaign that included state election site breach: Federal prosecutors announced charges today against two Iranian hackers accused of attempting to sow chaos and fear during the 2020 presidential election . Seyyed Mohammad Hosein Musa Kazemi and Sajjad Kashian stole more than 100,000 voters’ private information from the election website of an unspecified U.S. state, sent threatening emails to voters and spread false claims about election security vulnerabilities, according to the indictment.

— Oklahoma governor commutes Julius Jones’ death sentence: Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt commuted the death sentence of condemned inmate Julius Jones today, just hours before his scheduled execution. Jones has proclaimed his innocence from death row for more than two decades in the 1999 killing of a suburban Oklahoma City businessman. Stitt commuted the 41-year-old Jones’ death sentence to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. Jones had been scheduled for execution at 4 p.m.

 

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— Schumer, McConnell take softer approach on debt limit fight: Chuck Schumer and Mitch McConnell clobbered each other incessantly during October’s debt ceiling standoff. Now, as a new December deadline approaches, they’re taking a slightly more conciliatory approach . “The best way to characterize it is we’re going to be discussing the way forward,” McConnell said in a brief interview Thursday, ahead of a meeting in Schumer’s office. The talks between the majority and minority leaders come as the Treasury Department projects the U.S. government can stave off a debt default until Dec. 15. While some independent estimates suggest the so-called X-date could be some time between mid-December and early February, the discussions highlight a new sense of urgency to avoid an economic crisis.

— House Covid panel subpoenas former Trump adviser Navarro: A congressional committee investigating the Trump administration’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic issued a subpoena for former White House trade adviser Peter Navarro today for failing to respond to document and interview requests. The subpoena is the second issued by the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis since its formation last year. The committee is probing whether former Trump administration officials mishandled the federal response to the pandemic, specifically whether it interfered with its own health agencies’ work and how it attempted to change its messaging to downplay the threats posed by the virus.

AROUND THE WORLD

Shuai Peng of China plays during the 2020 Australian Open at Melbourne Park.

Peng Shuai of China plays during the 2020 Australian Open at Melbourne Park. | Mark Kolbe/Getty Images

MORE BEIJING OLYMPIC TROUBLE — A growing number of athletes and politicians have raised questions about Chinese tennis champion Peng Shuai , who hasn’t been seen since she accused a senior Communist Party leader of sexual assault, Stuart Lau writes.

Peng’s situation puts the International Olympic Committee in an uncomfortable spot, as Beijing faces international attention on its upcoming Winter Games in February 2022.

Five British MPs who have previously been sanctioned by Beijing wrote to U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson today with the same plea. “It is likely that neither the President nor other U.S. government officials will travel to China … It is vital that we keep up the momentum and follow suit in the U.K.,” they wrote.

Tim Loughton, a veteran Conservative MP and one of the letter’s co-authors, told POLITICO it would be “unthinkable” to send athletes and diplomats to China in the wake of Peng’s apparent disappearance.

German MEP Engin Eroglu from the Renew Europe group also hit out at Beijing, all the while criticizing other European institutions for “radio silence” on the issue.

 

STEP INSIDE THE WEST WING: What's really happening in West Wing offices? Find out who's up, who's down, and who really has the president’s ear in our West Wing Playbook newsletter, the insider's guide to the Biden White House and Cabinet. For buzzy nuggets and details that you won't find anywhere else, subscribe today.

 
 
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NIGHTLY NUMBER

About 40 lbs.

The weights of Peanut Butter and Jelly, the two turkeys who are eligible for the presidential pardon this year. On Friday, Biden will pardon one of the two and dub the bird the official Thanksgiving turkey — although both birds will be spared from the Thanksgiving table.

PARTING WORDS

DESANTIS’ BIG PLAY — Florida’s special legislative session can be summed up in one phrase: What Gov. Ron DeSantis wants, he gets.

DeSantis called the special session in October to fight the Biden administration’s coronavirus vaccine mandates and after just three days the Florida House and Senate approved four bills that undermine Biden’s vaccine push, Matt Dixon writes.

DeSantis never made an appearance during the special legislative session in Tallahassee but used his huge political sway over the Republican-dominated Legislature to get his bills passed. One measure gives workers exemptions if they don’t want to get the shot and includes a provision fining small businesses $10,000 and larger companies $50,000 for firing workers who don’t want the vaccine.

“The governor can do anything he wants to do,” state Rep. Ardian Zika said this week. He spoke on the House floor while Democrats grilled him over a measure giving the governor $1 million to study the state withdrawing from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which wrote the Biden administration’s plan to mandate vaccines for large businesses.

A message from eBay:

Americans throughout the country turn to online marketplaces to sell used personal items to make ends meet and keep things out of landfills. A new law passed earlier this year will require millions of them to receive confusing and burdensome tax forms for their sales online, even when they don’t owe taxes because they’re selling used goods. eBay believes the new low reporting threshold will cause confusion and over-reporting of non-taxable income for millions of Americans already struggling as a result of the pandemic. Congress should protect consumers and increase the reporting threshold for platforms enabling consumer sales of goods. Learn more about eBay's position on raising the 1099-K threshold and lifting the burden on Americans.

 


 

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