FREE FOR ALL: Rep. Pramila Jayapal's blunt advice for Joe Biden
The Progressive Caucus chair on the fraught state of the Democratic coalition, why Biden’s “superpower” is his Achilles’ heel on Gaza, and why defending democracy isn't enough to win in November
Congresswoman Jayapal’s analysis of the President’s strengths and weaknesses and her argument for change in the Democratic Party’s thinking is incredibly important, especially as we get closer to the election, so we’re opening our conversation to all readers. We hope you find it insightful — and inspirational.
What does it take to move a president? And how much movement is enough?
Rep. Pramila Jayapal is a veteran of Bernie Sanders’ team and currently serves as chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. She’s been a resolute progressive voice, a defender of immigrant rights and reproductive freedoms, and was an early advocate for a ceasefire in Gaza.
Jayapal has also been a crucial power broker between progressives and President Biden, working closely with the White House to deliver on major legislation, from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act to the Inflation Reduction Act. She’s uniquely placed to understand what it’s taken to move Joe Biden — once seen as the consummate centrist dealmaker — to embrace more progressive positions that helped motivate voters in 2020 and deliver the election.
Today, however, the broad coalition that Biden gelled together is in trouble. Discontent is building among younger and more progressive voters — critical parts of the Democratic base — over continuing American support for the Netanyahu government as it continues to pursue the war in Gaza and a sense that the economy under Biden hasn’t delivered enough help for regular people.
While the Biden-Harris campaign has been making the case that a second Trump term is a threat to democracy that Americans cannot risk, progressives like Jayapal fear that effort may not be enough to win over disillusioned voters — and that without a robust policy agenda laying out exactly what the Democrats will deliver in a second Biden term, they may not get the chance to try again.
We talked to Congresswoman Jayapal about what it’s like to work with Biden, how the Gaza war has challenged the decades-old thinking that has defined U.S. foreign policy and has exposed weaknesses in Biden’s policy approach, why Biden’s empathy is both his superpower and an obstacle to some of his biggest goals, and why a bold progressive policy agenda is the best way to fight Trumpism and preserve democracy.
It’s a conversation you won’t want to miss, with insight into how things get done in Washington from someone who’s been key to the evolution of Democratic policy positions and continues to be a voice for progressive change.
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I'd love to hear about the origin of your relationship with then-candidate Joe Biden and how that relates to or reflects the larger progressive movement’s relationship with the person who's now President Biden.
It starts with Bernie Sanders for me, and being the chair of Bernie's health policy work during Bernie's second campaign. When it was clear that Bernie didn't have the Electoral College votes or the state votes to carry the campaign through, he called me — and we were in communication quite a bit — and said, "We are going to try and make sure that we leverage our votes and our campaign to make Joe Biden the most progressive president he can be."
And he asked me if I would consider talking to then-candidate Joe Biden. And he said that Biden was a very relationship-based person, which is something I found to be very true, and that it was really important to build a relationship with him early.
And so the president called me — or then-candidate Joe Biden called me — and we had a really wonderful conversation. It was clear to me that on health and healthcare, he was not going to be a Medicare-for-all person. So the question really was, what could we agree on? How far could we push to expand healthcare access? But more broadly, what did Joe Biden want to accomplish? And what did progressives want to accomplish? Through the task forces, we were able to establish a progressive economic agenda that was very helpful in the early shaping of Joe Biden on domestic policy.
And then we pushed very hard. It was an early strategic decision for me to say that we were pushing for the president's agenda rather than a progressive agenda. He would call me sometimes after hearing me on TV talking about the president's agenda, and I would get a call: "Pramila, it's Joe. Joe Biden."
In case you didn't know which Joe.
It became kind of an amazing opportunity. And after COVID was just starting to lift, in the middle of Build Back Better negotiations, he called to tell me he really appreciated what I had said on TV. And I said, "Well, I'd really like to talk to you more about what we're trying to push for in making sure that the infrastructure bill and the Build Back Better go together." And he said, "Okay, do you want to come over now?" And I was really quite kind of stunned. It ended up being the next morning. He and I had breakfast together. And we went through in detail, Build Back Better, all the different pieces. And we had substantive conversations about what we were trying to push for and what it would take.
And that was really the beginning of the relationship, which continued all the way through that first term, including the very challenging times when we were holding up the infrastructure bill and insisting on passing Build Back Better. And we had to negotiate what that looked like. And in the end, it was to pass both of them through the House, which was our goal from the beginning.
That feels like a defining story of the Biden era, the ability of a broad coalition to hang together without needing to be the same. Lots of regular Americans right now struggle with this in life, with their in-laws and neighbors and friends — there's a feeling in a lot of American life now that if we don't think the same, we can't stay in communication.
What allowed a coalition to coalesce in spite of differences? Is it a human thing? Is it a relationship thing? Is it respect instead of agreement? If there's no agreement, what is the thing that's holding people together?
With the president and his team, we were on the same page about our goals. Respect was absolutely a key part of it. And really seeing progressives as being the biggest part of the president's coalition. That is something that a lot of Democratic administrations have never really acknowledged, that the base is always expected to sort of come along no matter what we do because we're, of course, the best option. And don't you know better than to protest us or to ask us to do more? Don't you see we're doing the best we possibly can?
There was a different relationship with the Biden administration. And the president saw it too. He felt very — grateful is not quite the right word; he recognized the base had turned out for him in Arizona, that black voters had turned out for him in Georgia, that progressives had been a very important part of his coalition and his winning.
The other question is about how we interact with people who disagree with us fundamentally, and I'll take the example of this election. And obviously, I want Biden to be elected, even though I have differences with him on strategy around Gaza or strategy around immigration. And what I have been saying to people who are sometimes disillusioned is that in politics, perfection is very rarely on the ballot, if ever, but real progress is.
And so the question is, how do you get the most progress you can possibly get? What are the levers of power that you can push to get more progress than people think is possible? And how do you still maintain a culture of respect even with your disagreements?
The initial coalitional romance of progressives and Joe Biden felt so improbable at the time. It felt very strange to have $3 trillion-plus bills coming out of Joe Biden, of all the people who ran in that primary. And as you were just alluding to, it feels like a different moment now. When it comes to Gaza, to a lesser extent when it comes to the border, there's a story of disenchantment in the coalition to tell as well, many of the people in your flock.
You clearly have an empathetic understanding of this president. You've experienced how he can be moved by new information. But on Gaza, he’s seemed more unalterable. He’s seemed less susceptible to the kinds of persuasion that your members have been more effective at moving him with on other issues. Why has this proven so different?
There was the push of the campaign that he had to win. And therefore, the immediacy of what he said on the campaign, what he needed to say on the campaign, and what he then had to implement. We had the trifecta, so we had an opportunity to implement all of those things versus now where we are in the second two years of the administration. We don't have the House, so we can't pass major reforms. And there's another election coming up. And often, Democrats turn more conservative as the election comes up, even though that's not the right analysis to make or take, but that is often what we're fighting. And so there's just the reality of those two very different situations.
But I also think on this issue, the president — I mean, he was the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee — comes out of a point of view that is still, in my mind, quite rooted in decades-ago foreign policy. And while that's not totally true with Afghanistan, for example —
He challenged the orthodoxy.
He did not want to be in another war. I don't think he wants Americans to be in another war. He has been clear about not sending troops into Ukraine, for example. He has been clear about not sending troops to different places. And yet, we are in another war.
But I really think at the core are the president's own beliefs about Israel and about Netanyahu.
A kind of mid-20th-century feeling that this country represents a unique response to a unique historical episode, which was very rooted in a certain time and place. But for a lot of the younger Americans who are drawn to progressive candidates and causes, there are other stories to be told in that region that are less represented.
That's exactly right. Today, the vast majority of people are not questioning Israel's right to exist, but he is still in that place.
October 7th was a reminder for many people of a particular way of looking at things without the understanding of how occupation, oppression of a people, lack of freedom of a people contribute to radicalization. Even though there were lessons to be learned from Iraq about how we responded, or how we shouldn't have responded in Afghanistan, those didn't carry forward. They got overwhelmed by that decades-old foreign policy view.
I also think he genuinely believed that he could move Netanyahu and that he could move this to a better place. And they have argued to me that they have prevented a lot of terrible things from happening. Maybe that's true. But when you have such terrible things that have happened anyway, it's difficult to say, "Well, that was worth it."
In the two stories you've told there's a similar human belief underneath. The positive story of his openness to progressives in the beginning was based on this belief that the relationship can trump the specifics of a policy. And that is a mental model that President Biden has, but if you apply it to the Israeli situation, maybe he's had an overconfidence in the ability of a relationship to matter.
I think that is exactly right. Relationship is very important to him.
And sometimes a very powerful thing.
Very powerful, for better and worse. He does take it seriously, but on this issue now, I feel — and this is just me talking — that he's painted himself into a box, and it's very difficult for him to get himself out of that box, so when he establishes a red line on Rafah, he doesn't want to implement the red line. As I've said, the red line is so thin, we can't see it.
On Israel, certainly, he has gotten more aggressive, but at some point, if this ceasefire deal is not coming through, then he's going to have to make a choice because our bombs are still being used to kill people in Gaza, and he knows that, and there's going to have to be a point at which he says, "Israel has to stop this. They cannot do this with American bombs and American military assistance."
I don't presume to say this is easy or that there's an easy answer, and maybe that's also part of your initial question about how we talk to people who disagree. This is a very tough issue. There's a lot of trauma on every side, and there are things that trigger that trauma for different people, so it's extremely difficult to have a conversation about this, but the president is uniquely qualified to be able to do that. And he's starting to do that. I just don't know if it's too late, at this point.
When you look at these international cases — crimes against humanity, war crimes, etcetera — I wonder, first of all, are you sympathetic to the substance of those findings? And second, obviously, no one has brought the United States into this, but do you think, for supplying a lot of those munitions, the United States risks a kind of complicity?
That's why you've seen the United States be very wary of endorsing the ICC or the ICJ's findings, and that's why the United States has never supported the ICC because of what the legal liability is for the United States on that moral question. But with the ICJ, it gets complicated because, obviously, we supported the ICJ's findings on Ukraine and Russia.
I do believe, without a doubt, that the Netanyahu government has violated international humanitarian law. There's no question in my mind about that. And that we in the United States have not applied our domestic laws to funding the Netanyahu government, We've given them a pass on this.
And Joe Biden — I said that his superpower is being empathetic. If you look at the worker in Pennsylvania or Michigan or Wisconsin, what do they like about him? He understands their struggles. He talks about his own struggles. But on this issue, we haven't seen that empathy from him towards Palestinians and towards those who have been killed and injured and those who have been left behind and those who are watching and wondering what it means about America's values.
I have a lot of folks in my base that I'm connected with who are watching this play out. And don't forget that we have a big community that is connected directly to Gaza. And the values question of what America stands for is at the core. It's at the heart of everything.
How can we value — and I'm just saying this is how people think — an Israeli life more than we value a Palestinian life? How many Palestinians should die for the hostages to be released? I think that not just the president, but some of the spokespeople in the administration have been a little tone-deaf to this question, and that undermines the president's superpower, which is really important for why people would want to vote for him.
Imagine the most disaffected progressive voters out there who you’ve met. Even well before October 7th, what a lot of them had in common was a sense of abandonment by anybody with power and influence. They see problems in their lives that are not solved by government, that are not covered by journalists. They see big crises happen and no one really acts commensurate with the crisis.
Then this comes along and it just confirms this sense. The most powerful country in the history of the world apparently cannot stop a small country to whom it's supplying all the weapons from doing whatever it wants.
I know you want people — in spite of all these feelings, and you're not disrespecting their feelings — to come around and vote for Joe Biden. How do you deal with that level of hurt and disaffection?
You start with respect and listening. Too many in our party shake their fingers at young people and tell them they should know better, and of course, we're better than the other guy, and I don't think that's the way.
We need to lay out a strategy — and this of the things that I've been working on — showing people how much we did get done, not as a laundry list, but picking one or two things that resonate for the group that I happen to be talking with. It could be student debt cancellation. It could be climate change, and saying, "Nobody thought this was possible five years ago, but we got it done. Now let's think about the strategy and what is blocking us."
A lot of us talk about changing the rulers, right? We think about running people for office and getting more young people and folks of color in, but we very rarely talk about changing the rules. Young people have been told, "Give us the House, the Senate, and the White House, and we're going to get gun control done, and we're going to get this done, and we're going to get that done." And then we don't get it done. And then we say, "Well, sorry, it's not our fault. We have this thing called the filibuster.” And so we have to use some arcane process called budget reconciliation. And there's some unelected woman who's stopping us from passing a minimum wage.”
Well, you lost them at the very beginning. They're like, "I don't care. You told me you could get it done. Now you're telling me all the reasons you can't get it done." So we have to bring people into the conversation of what it takes to change the rules and how we're going to do that, and then also what is so close. Because a lot of people don't realize how close we were with some of the things we couldn't get done.
I'm curious why you think America is having this moment of rising authoritarianism now, whether you think it's a measure of institutional collapse or of backlash to progress or both. You also saw it in the European elections. As we saw in India, sometimes there's pushback. But I'm curious why you think we're in this authoritarian moment and how you think ultimately we get out of it.
We allowed the space for people to use the authoritarian arguments against government, against governing. If people are afraid for their own economic security, then you open the space for them to consider other options. So when Democrats were not progressive enough, when we didn't do enough to make sure that we supported fair trade instead of free trade, that we raised the minimum wage, that we took on the filibuster and got rid of it, and instead made institutional arguments for why the Senate is a more august body that deserves to have 40 senators who represent 12 percent of the country's population blocking us from making change, I think those all played into people's sense that this current form of government does not work for me, that it's rigged.
And then with our lack of campaign finance reforms, we continued to allow the special interests to rig even more the government as it works today. And so all of that makes people feel really hopeless and say, "Well, this is not working. I would rather have —" and there's a tendency already. There's a lot of research, as you know, that shows that people like strongmen because they’re authoritative, and they're going to tell you what to do, and they're going to fix it, even if you don't like everything about them.
And it inverts the weakness you're feeling in your own life.
Exactly. There is that human tendency. And so what you have to do is prevent that space from opening up by really taking care of the economic needs of people. People don't believe they can save. They don't believe they're going to be able to retire. They don't believe they can send their kids to school. They can't afford their housing or their childcare.
And it just gives an authoritarian like Donald Trump the ability to come in. But I don't think it starts with Donald Trump. The level of economic insecurity in the richest country in the world, racial angst and fear, and other ways that we've learned to divide people on class, race, and gender have all come together at the same time.
President Biden is running against Donald Trump as a threat to democracy at every turn. But everything you just said suggests that the best way to defeat that threat to democracy may not simply be to point out how big a threat to democracy it is, but to offer an economic policy vision so big, so bold, so dazzling, so helpful in many arenas of a person's life that they get distracted from the strongman pose. We haven't seen that kind of second-term agenda proposed. Is that something you'd like to see to help defeat authoritarianism?
Yes. And that is exactly the theory behind our Progressive Caucus Proposition Agenda that we released several weeks ago. It's a both-and. We have to be real about the threats to democracy, but we need to make it as personal as possible, not like some vague threat to democracy. But what does that mean for you? Obviously, talking about abortion rights and stripping fundamental freedoms from people is really a key way to do that.
But then we also have to have our agenda. We cannot just be against somebody else. It's not enough in this moment of very tight margins. You'll get some people who are motivated by the democracy threat, but they're going to have to see that we will be better for their economic future and that we are really committed to getting these things done. It's not, "Let's do all these things in 10 years." It's, "What can we do immediately upon getting the Senate, the House, and the White House? What is our day-one agenda that is populist, popular, and possible, all three of those things?"
We have to campaign on those things with a tremendous amount of respect for where people are and bring them into a different vision of how we're going to make a difference in their lives so that when they wake up in the morning, they are going to feel differently about their individual possibilities — not just about the country as a whole, but how their lives are going to be improved.
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Thanks for this. I don't know where we'd be without Pramila Jayapal. She has led the caucus so ably, and I hope she will reconsider her choice to leave that post. She speaks very cogently here about how to keep moving our progressive agenda ahead. Question: Has she spoken to Biden about the need to embrace the progressive agenda, or SOME agenda, as his platform for his next term? He hasn't said word one about his next term, while Trump is talking about making restaurant worker tips tax-free. As they once were.
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