Panel: How concerned should Democrats be ahead of midterm elections?
Karl Rove, Harold Ford Jr. and Jennifer Griffin say Democrats need to walk alongside everyday Americans.
Critics slammed CNN's Chris Cillizza Wednesday for saying Republicans have gotten to be "much more" conservative than Democrats have grown more liberal.
Cillizza pointed to a Pew Research Center report in his write-up, headlined, "Yes, Its Republicans' fault Congress is so Polarized." The report found that Democrats have only grown "marginally" more liberal since the 1970s. Republicans, he wrote, "have grown significantly more conservative."
FILE - In this Nov. 2, 2020, file photo sunlight shines on the U.S. Capitol building on Capitol Hill in Washington. President-elect Joe Biden wants to "restore the soul of America." First, he'll need to fix a broken and divided Congress. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky) (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky, File)
Several people reacted to Cillizza's conclusion and said that "no one believes this," with some criticizing the study itself which Cillizza cited.
"Obama was supporting traditional marriage in 2008 during his presidential campaign," Noam Blum, podcast host and Tablet Magazine's Chief Technology Officer, said.
CNN'S CHRIS CILLIZZA WONDERS WHETHER KAMALA HARRIS' EUROPEAN VISIT COULD BE A LEADERSHIP 'MOMENT’
WASHINGTON, DC - JUNE 16: U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) (3rd L) speaks as (L-R) Rep. Angie Craig (D-MN), Speaker of the House Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-CA) listen during a news conference at the U.S. Capitol June 16, 2021 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)
"Your regular reminder that these studies are absolute trash. The study anchors get to determine what is centrist, conservative, and liberal and can use that to produce any result they want. Garbage in, garbage out," Brian Riedl, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, said.
"There's no value judgment here - moving leftward probably better represents a lot of the Democratic voter base, and they won the White House in 2008, 2012, and 2020. But let's not pretend that a 1970s median Democrat would even recognize today's party," Riedl continued.
Others put it more simply, such as author John Daly, who said "uh, no."
Dan Gainor of the Media Research Center said the report was "hilariously stupid."
Cilizza also wrote that Congress as a whole has moved more to the right, noting Pew's finding that the House and the Senate are "demonstrably more conservative" than the governing body was in the 1970s.
"Not only have Republicans moved faster and further to the ideological right than Democrats have gone to the left, but also that they have made the entirety of the House and Senate more conservative over the past 50 years," Cilizza wrote.
Conservatives have argued that progressive members of the Democratic Party had an outsized influence on President Biden in the first year of his presidency, while also noting the apparent contrast that Biden presented himself as more of a centrist compared to competitors like Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., during the 2020 presidential campaign.
President Joe Biden ditched his signature mask for his first State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday. (Jim Lo Scalzo/Pool via AP) (Jim Lo Scalzo/Pool via AP)
The progressive arm of the Democratic Party has fought with more moderate members of the party on several issues - one of the biggest being the inner conflict surrounding social spending bill and infrastructure package in 2021. The two bills became linked early in 2021 and as Congress set out to put the infrastructure bill to a vote, the moderate and progressive wings of the Democratic appeared to clash, as the social spending bill was supposed to be voted on at the same time.
Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, D-NY., said she would vote no on infrastructure in October if the Democrats didn't provide the text of the social spending bill.
"I don't see how ethically I can vote to increase U.S. climate emissions," Ocasio-Cortez said at the time, referring to the infrastructure legislation. "We have had a framework for six months. We need text."
In June 2021, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said that the Democratic Party was "dynamic" and not a "lock-step rubber stamp."
UNITED STATES - JUNE 23: Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., attends the House Natural Resources Committee hearing titled Examining the Department of the Interior's Spending Priorities and the President's FY2022 Budget Proposal, in Longworth Building on Wednesday, June 23, 2021. (Photo By Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images) (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
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Biden has not seemed to go far enough to the left on some policy initiatives, however, as one member of The Squad, Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., still felt compelled to deliver a response to Biden's first State of the Union address.
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