RETIREMENTS WILL ALTER DEMOCRATIC PARTY FOR YEARS
Chicago Rep. Bobby Rush’s announcement that he will retire this year makes him the 24th House Democrat (so far) to not seek re-election in 2022. The rush for the exits both portends well for Republican midterm prospects and will shape the ideological contours of House Democrats for years to come.
The conventional wisdom is that so many Democrats are leaving because they can read the tea leaves and don’t want to spend years wandering in a powerless minority. President Joe Biden’s awful job approval ratings, combined with polls showing Republicans ahead in the congressional generic ballot, are consistent with this analysis.
More House Democrats will surely step aside as the new year progresses. Many states haven’t even opened filing to run for congressional seats. Fifteen of the 41 members who didn’t run again for the House in 2012, the last election that followed a redistricting year, announced their decisions after Jan. 1. That suggests 10 or more further departures are still to come from both parties.
Some of the vacated seats are prime targets for Republican takeovers. The Arizona district held by Ann Kirkpatrick, for example, has been redrawn to lean Republican. And the seat that Wisconsin’s Ron Kind is departing is a rural, blue-collar district that Donald Trump carried twice.
Most Democratic retirees, however, are vacating seats that even a Republican tsunami couldn’t paint red. That means the successors to these members will be decided in Democratic primaries, injecting new blood into an aging Democratic caucus.
These fights will likely carry significant ideological implications. It’s no secret that progressives have increasingly won contests in safe blue regions. It will be telling if more progressive candidates, such as Pennsylvania State Rep. Summer Lee, beat out conventional Democrats in these seats. Lee, who is running to succeed retiring Pittsburgh Rep. Mike Doyle, defeated an incumbent state representative in 2018 as a member of the Democratic Socialists of America. Justice Democrats, a leftist advocacy group, has already endorsed Lee for her run this year. She would join the high-profile “Squad” of progressives if she wins.
The Democratic House caucus will likely be pushed leftward even if more establishment candidates win. The race to succeed retiring Louisville Democrat John Yarmuth is a case in point. So far, Kentucky state Rep. Attica Scott and state Sen. Morgan McGarvey are battling for the seat. Scott was a community organizer who soundly defeated a 34-year incumbent Democrat in 2016. Her campaign website lists her progressive bona fides, from her commitment to “health justice” to “marijuana justice” (she’s for legalization). Her establishment foe touts endorsements from Kentucky’s elite Democratic politics, including multiple unions, elected officials and a longtime former Louisville mayor. But McGarvey is also campaigning as “a progressive champion for Kentucky” who wants to “tackle the existential threat of climate change” and “end generational poverty.” If he wins, he will have to keep leaning leftward to fend off the sort of progressive primary challenges that toppled other establishment Democrats in recent years.
Democratic retirements are thus likely to lead to two outcomes: increasing Republican chances of winning a secure majority, and pushing the Democratic Party further to the left. That, in turn, will increase pressure on Biden to follow suit, as progressives angry over the apparent demise of the Build Back Better bill are already urging him to use executive action to advance their agenda. Those calls will only increase as congressional progressives increase their numbers.
Bobby Rush got his start in public life as a radical who helped found the Black Panther Party in the 1960s. Sixties-style radicalism quickly fell out of vogue, but 21st-century leftism seems to be on the rise. As the great Bob Dylan once sang, “The times they are a changin’.”