What's Stopping A Progressive Takeover Of Congress?

David Freedlander, New York City–based journalist and author of "The AOC Generation:

How Millennials Are Seizing Power and Rewriting the Rules of American Politics," joins the show to discuss Progressive politicians and power dynamics in the House of Representatives. Freedlander and Emma Vigeland discuss Justice Democrats, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and The Squad, where The Squad's power currently lies, current electoral patterns in districts with different demographic makeups, and who is likely to come to power within the Left as Pelosi and Hoyer age out.

We stream our live show every day at 12 PM ET.

We need your help to keep providing free videos! Support the Majority Report's video content by going to

Watch the Majority Report live MF at 12 p.m. EST at youtube.com/samseder or listen via daily podcast at

Download our FREE app

SUPPORT the show by becoming a member

We Have Merch!!!

LIKE us on Facebook

FOLLOW us on Twitter

SUBSCRIBE to us on YouTube

Emma Vigeland: What has to give for somebody like Ocasio-Cortez and newer Justice Democrats, Brand New Congress folks to take power there, because despite the significance of this race in terms of looking at the American Left, there's a lot of obstacles that are still in the way of kind of a Progressive takeover in Congress.

David Freedlander: Yeah, obviously the biggest one is is to sort of win seats, and the people, some of the people, that were behind Ocasio-Cortez's run, this group called Justice Democrats who are often sort of called the Tea Party of the Left — but I think they're actually a lot savvier than that, because they only tend to run in these safe urban districts that are very diverse, and they're represented by kind of older, mostly white but certainly moderate lawmakers. And they focused on those, thinking that if you just can win a handful of those you can kind of remake the Congress. And they've certainly done that I mean now the Justice Dems i think they're called, it's sort of like The Squad writ large, but they're a decently sized political force. There's maybe nine or so of them which isn't bad in a 215 person body, and so that's the first thing.

I think that the kind of way in which American politics is set up right now and probably for the future is going to limit their power when it comes to negotiating bills and leverage and all this stuff, just because it my read on it, is it always seems like the moderates have this advantage where you can't... like the left wing of the party is not going to walk away from half a loaf if it means getting half of the population Medicare, if it means half of an infrastructure bill, if it means like half of a child allowance kind of thing. And so they kind of don't have leverage in that sense. What they do have leverage in and what makes Ocasio-Cortez so effective, particularly for someone who is just a second-term lawmaker, is that you control this sort of national media spotlight. And they do control the media narrative, you know. And they can... I mean, Ocasio-Cortez in her first year in office was on like "RuPaul's Drag Race" right, so they're the ones who could kind of like, I think, in general, sort of frame and shape the debate, even if they don't have a lot of influence on how the actual sausage then gets made.

Emma Vigeland: Because then when the sausage gets made, you have Hakeem Jeffries, who has taken over Crowley's old leadership position, who is starting a Super PAC, to combat the Justice Democrats, there is the old guard. Where of course it's obviously Steny Hoyer, Pelosi — they're older in age and also part of the old guard, but then you have ideological equivalents like Hakeem Jeffries coming up who are going to take that mantle whenever Pelosi or Hoyer retire. How do you combat that?

David Freedlander: I think that's really difficult because one thing we've seen is that communities of color — we'll get in as we talk about the mayor's race in here in New York, perhaps — have not been as amenable to that kind of messaging from the Justice Dems, from some of the left-leaning aspects of the party. And we're seeing this kind of divide where whiter but still diverse neighborhoods in districts end up electing very left-leaning lawmakers and then mostly communities of color end up electing mostly moderate lawmakers. And so I think something kind of will have to crack that apart, and it's hard to see precisely what that is right now.