I want to preface this post with a simple confession: I’m old. And yes, I am a baby boomer, albeit a late-stage one, so feel free to issue the usual “Okay, boomer” eye-rolls, I totally get it – my generation has had plenty of opportunity to get things right, and we totally blew it. So let me simply say that, as with most of my content, I am speaking for myself, not my fuck-up generation, a goodly portion of which showed promise early on but whose best potential was not ultimately realized. (In truth, only about a third of boomers were on what might be termed as the political left during their youthful prime, so what potential there may have been was not broadly shared.)

That said, as someone who has been watching Congress since his teens, I can vouch for the fact that we have seen progress over the past forty years in increasing representation of the left in the House of Representatives. Yes, we have a long way to go before we can hope to move legislation in a more unapologetically radical direction, but for the first time in my longish life, we have a solid caucus of progressive Democrats who actually support a leftist agenda in both legislation and oversight. What’s more, there are opportunities to expand this caucus in the coming years if progressives and leftists in this country organize and engage in coalition-building between movements, regions, and organizations.

Let me be clear. I do not expect Congressmembers to agree with me on every issue. I am pretty far to the left politically, and if I withhold support from candidates until I find one that aligns with me on every issue, I will end up supporting no one. Forty years ago, the closest I could come to a House member that held views similar to mine was Ron Dellums. Shirley Chisholm was good, as well as a handful of others, but there were typically very serious trade-offs, and the overwhelming majority of Congresspeople back then were older white men. In the 90s and 2000s, Barbara Lee (who started as an aide to Dellums and succeeded him in his seat, I believe) was the only serious progressive in the House, and my expectations were pretty low regarding the Democratic caucus at that time. For instance, I was glad when Nancy Pelosi took over leadership of Congressional Democrats after the drubbing they took in the 2002 election, only because she was slightly more progressive than her predecessor in leadership, Dick Gephardt. (Again …. very limited expectations.)

Compare that with today. Now we have the recently-expanded “squad” – AOC, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Presley, Rashida Talib, Jamaal Bowman, and Cory Bush, all of whom are way, way to the left of where Congressional progressives were in the 1990s and 2000s. We’ve got solid progressives like Ro Khanna (whose foreign policy views are as nuanced as I’ve ever heard from a sitting Congressmember), Pramila Jayapal, Mondaire Jones, Katy Porter (best interrogator in the House), Dan Kildee, and elders like Barbara Lee, Raul Grijalva, Mark Pocan, etc. There are others as well, like Jamie Raskin, who have strong progressive tendencies on key issues and could lend support on legislation.

Now, admittedly, there is a broad range of views represented by the folks I named above. But overall, the caucus is further to the left than it has ever been throughout my lifetime. And while there’s much left to do, much further to go, this is like a base camp on the side of this mountain we’re climbing. It’s something we can build on from this point forward, if we work together.

luv u,

jp