Rep. Greg Casar outlines progressive caucus efforts to rebrand Democratic Party

Lisa Desjardins:

And there are just a handful of weeks before that change. Democrats themselves have been at odds over their future direction during the new Trump era.

But today speaks to the extraordinary circumstance Democrats are in, House Republicans unable to pass legislation their own.

I talked about all of that a short time ago with freshman Congressman Greg Casar. He's a 35-year-old from Austin, Texas, and was just elected the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. He will be the youngest person ever to lead that group come January.

Thank you so much for joining me, Congressman Casar.

I want to start with where we are today. It seems as though the proposed continuing resolution may be falling apart. What do you think this means right now?

Rep. Greg Casar (D-TX):

I think we're beginning to see the chaos and billionaire corruption of the Trump era.

I mean, Trump tried to campaign talking about how he was going to help working people and deal with corruption. And I knew that pretty immediately he was going to betray his own message and his own voters.

So, essentially, for folks who haven't heard, Republicans and Democrats were negotiating to come together to keep essential government services open here at the end of the year. And then, suddenly, Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, full of many of the worst ideas in the world, basically ordered House Republicans to shut it down.

And he said he wanted to shut it down over — quote, unquote — "Democrat priorities." Those priorities are disaster funding to rebuild places like North Carolina that got hit by these awful storms and funding to make sure that small farmers don't go out of business because of things like droughts and tornadoes and other disasters.

And these are things that aren't just being asked for by Democratic members. In fact, a lot of these things really impact a lot of Republican areas and Republican constituents. So, Democrats said, let's keep the government open. Let's make sure people can access services like their veteran services and Social Security over the holiday.

And Donald Trump is basically ordering for all of it to get shut down at the behest of his billionaire friend Elon Musk, who's kind of cosplaying co-president right now.

Lisa Desjardins:

You head one of the largest ideological caucuses for Democrats, the Progressive Caucus. What do you want progressives to stand for?

Rep. Greg Casar:

The Progressive Caucus is best prepared to help reform and transform the Democratic Party after our losses in this election.

It is Progressive Caucus members that are authentic leaders that are unbought, unbossed, who have been willing to stand up to corporate power. And I think what a lot of disaffected voters wanted to hear from the Democratic Party in this election was that we would be willing to stand up to the Wall Street CEOs that are jacking up housing prices.

They wanted to hear Democrats say we're willing to stand up to the big corporations that are jacking up prices at the grocery store. And it's Progressive Caucus members that have been willing to do that in the past. And I hope that we can lead the Democratic Party into leaning into those issues, where we're popular, not just with Democratic voters.

But standing up to Wall Street, standing up to special interests and corruption is popular with this — independent voters, with people that don't traditionally vote, and actually with a lot of America's conservatives.

So I think the Progressive Caucus can help lead us in that kind of direction, take us away from some of the culture wars that we see Republicans starting. Republicans try to divert our attention towards those culture wars. And I think the Progressive Caucus instead should pivot towards those economic issues where the vast majority of the country agrees with us.

Lisa Desjardins:

As you're touching on, voters this election clearly moved to the right by different degrees in different parts of the country. But it was every single swing state, for sure, in the presidential election.

Did Democrats lose sight of what voters wanted and wanted to hear? Or did voters just turn away from Democrats?

Rep. Greg Casar:

Look, I don't think that this is a question necessarily of left or right. In talking to voters in swing states where I was campaigning for the vice president, in talking to swing voters across Texas, voters were looking for authenticity, somebody in their corner standing up and fighting for them.

And so I don't think that Democrats are going to succeed if we keep running the same playbook. We have got…

Lisa Desjardins:

Are you — Congressman, if I interrupt really quickly, are you saying that Democrats should work on their authenticity?

Rep. Greg Casar:

I think the Democratic brand has been damaged.

In the past, people said that the number one thing they associated positively with the Democratic Party was that we are the party of working people. And that holds up in our data from the post-World War II era all up until close to around 2010, 2012.

And that's when we started losing that part of our brand. And we have got to get back to that, because voters could disagree on a variety of cultural and social issues. I mean, we have got that in my own family. I'm sure you have got that in your own neighborhood around your Christmas or Thanksgiving table.

But back in the day, the way Democrats held the coalition together was to say, you might agree on this social issue or disagree on that one, but we're all united behind a party that's willing to stand up to the powerful in support of working people.

I saw this when I was a labor organizer before I was an elected official. I used to organize on construction sites, where you had immigrant Spanish-speaking workers on the same construction site as a fifth-generation Texan. We were bringing people together across race, across culture, across ideology, but everybody was fighting for a raise.

And when you have a Democratic Party that does the same thing, is fighting for a raise for working people, then people are willing, I think, to be a part of our big tent. And I think we have started to lose that, and we have got to regain that.

Lisa Desjardins:

Congressman Greg Casar of Texas, thank you so much.

Rep. Greg Casar:

Thank you.