To Be the Party of the Working Class, We Need More Working-Class Leaders in Congress
The Democratic Party is at a pivotal moment. Will we let the billionaire class handpick corporate Democrats or empower the working-class instead?
Democrats need more working-class leaders in Congress to be the party of the working class.
This past election cycle had more billionaire money than ever before – just 150 billionaire families spent nearly $2 billion to get their preferred candidates elected and win a Republican trifecta in the federal government. In Congress, mostly through AIPAC’s Super PAC, this also included over $30 million specifically into Democratic primaries to unseat two of the most working-class members to ever walk the halls of Congress – former nurse Cori Bush in Missouri and former middle school principal Jamaal Bowman in New York.
After AIPAC’s success in these two primaries, the cryptocurrency industry ran a carbon-copy strategy – funneling millions from Wall Street into our elections to buy bipartisanship cover for their policies. Crypto companies have accounted for nearly half of all donations made by corporations this election cycle and, most notably, spent over $40 million to beat anti-crypto, pro-worker Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown in Ohio last year. The richest man in the world, Elon Musk, also recently vowed to fund ‘moderate’ primary challengers to incumbent Democrats in deep blue seats when he doesn’t get what he wants. All this at a time when 60% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck, and, according to a 2017 study, three billionaire families own more wealth than the bottom half of the country.
Oligarchy has become the defining issue of our time – the US is moving rapidly toward an oligarchic and authoritarian society in which billionaires dominate the information we consume, our economic status, and our political representation.
The billionaire class has caught on to the threat a new generation of working-class leaders poses to their bottom line. They are investing more than ever in Democratic primaries as a key part of their election strategy because it has been one of the few tactics that has directly threatened their power to operate with impunity in the federal government.
The members of Congress our organization, Justice Democrats, recruited and helped get elected have challenged the status quo. They come from the working class and were elected by the working-class voters of their districts. They won with grassroots donations and refused corporate PAC and lobbyist money, so they are unbought and unbossed. They have forcefully taken on Donald Trump and the GOP over these last six years, and, when necessary, have challenged the leadership within their own party to ensure poor and working people aren’t left behind in policymaking and governance.
Whether it is standing with striking workers on the picket line; delivering historic levels of student debt relief and climate investments; sleeping on the Capitol steps to keep people in their homes; or for over a year, fighting to end the genocide being carried out against Palestinians with our tax dollars – Justice Democrats have used the power and megaphones of their congressional offices to speak up and put their bodies on the line to protect working families at home and abroad. They have set a new standard of urgency and leadership for working people in Congress Democrats cannot afford to lose.
Our opposition wants us to believe that we have already lost, and that challenging them is futile. But the truth is, our work together has never had more of an impact.
After once again losing to Donald Trump and failing to win majorities in the Senate and House, we are in a pivotal moment for the Democratic Party. If Democrats want to be the party of the working class, they need to start confronting the power structures that institutionalize inequality. We cannot lose sight that the same billionaires funding AIPAC and crypto's super PACs are the same billionaires flying Samuel Alito out on a private jet, who are the same billionaires who funded Donald Trump and JD Vance’s victory in November. This is not about which side has the better billionaires – this is about ridding our elections and government of all billionaire and corporate influence and moving forward with a new Democratic Party that takes on the wealthy few to serve the American majority.
Our opposition wants us to believe that we have already lost, and that challenging them is futile. But the truth is, our work together has never had more of an impact. The unprecedented response to the election of real working-class leaders to Congress over the last few cycles from the billionaire class and corporate-funded lobbies, like AIPAC and Crypto, shows that they are scared of the progress we have built. They know that the American public supports universal healthcare, getting money out of politics, ending weapons sales to Israel, and so much more. Their ridiculous levels of spending are the last gasps of an elite that is starting to lose control.
Working-class leadership matters and will continue to in the years ahead. Democrats win when they champion working-class people of all backgrounds. That means investing in recruiting candidates who have lived the struggles they are running to fix – nurses, teachers, carpenters, assembly line workers, tenants rights advocates, labor leaders, and organizers – while putting forward a vision as big as the problems we face. The seeds our movement plants now to empower and foster the next generation of working-class organizers and candidates who will inherit the future we are fighting for matters now more than ever. This is true up and down the ballot, but especially at our highest levels of political power in Congress. It has been our mission at Justice Democrats since we started in 2017 under Trump’s first presidency and will continue to be for as long as we exist.
A debate is taking place on how the party should move forward: Will we finally begin to be the party of the multiracial working class and embrace a new generation of leaders like the Justice Democrats in Congress? Or will we double down on becoming Republican-lite by cozying up with the wealthy elite and fall into the GOP’s divide-and-conquer strategy, targeting our most vulnerable communities?
The choice is up to us – the everyday people our politicians are elected to serve. We can let the billionaire class and Democratic leadership handpick corporate Democrats who will do their bidding or we can recruit and empower the working class instead.
Alexandra Rojas is the executive director of Justice Democrats, the national progressive organization that's recruited and helped elect progressive & working-class leaders. Usamah Andrabi is the communications director & spokesperson for Justice Democrats. Learn more about Justice Democrats and how you can nominate someone you know to run for Congress: justicedemocrats.com/nominate.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of Zeteo.
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Lack of working class representatives is a problem across the Anglo sphere and goes back 30 odd years when neoliberalism and its political equivalent, technocratic governance, got a real foothold in centre left political parties. They either fix it stat, or we are headed for authoritarian governments everywhere. It’s a real political crisis.
Cori Bush and Jamaal Bowman were the low hanging fruit of the Democratic Party. Both outspoken about the US supported genocide and then heavily targeted by AIPAC dollars. Where was the party leadership when this was transpiring? Accepting enormous AIPAC donations to remain silent. Hakeem Jeffries is a huge recipient of these dollars. I agree 100% with Jazzme. The Democratic Party will never accept and support a progressive agenda that focuses on the needs of the American people. The only way out of this duopoly created mess is for a coordinated third coalition of alternative parties and a defection of progressive Democrats to that coalition. I myself donated to the Justice Democrats in their early days. I thought AOC was the future of the party. Who was telling folks to shut the hell up and rally behind Biden following months of unmitigated genocidal support and a debate performance that revealed an empty suit? Justice Democrat superstar AOC.