Press Coverage

The Congressional Progressive Caucus is pushing its nearly 70 Democrats to oppose a sweeping funding bill on Thursday because it rolls back a key aspect of the Dodd-Frank financial reform law.

The whipping from the CPC came as liberal groups off Capitol Hill began to marshal opposition against the spending bill. The Progressive Change Campaign Committee, one of Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s biggest boosters, urged its members to call on lawmakers to oppose the anti-Dodd-Frank measures.

“Democrats lost in 2014 because they failed to inspire Americans with bold ideas that would tangibly improve people’s lives,” said Adam Green, PCCC co-founder. “One thing is for sure during the budget negotiations: Easing regulations on big Wall Street banks and gutting campaign finance laws would represent Democrats marching in the exact wrong direction.”

President Barack Obama’s choice of Antonio Weiss, an investment banker at Lazard Ltd., has put him at the center of an ideological fight within the Democratic Party over the finance industry’s clout in Washington.

So far, six senators have announced their opposition to Weiss. In addition to Manchin, Shaheen and Franken, Senators Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Richard Durbin of Illinois both said they would oppose Weiss, as did independent Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who caucuses with Democrats.

The Progressive Change Campaign Committee, which has supported primary challenges to Democrats, urged its members in a Dec. 8 e-mail to press for opposition to Weiss.

Financial reform groups that back Sen. Elizabeth Warren are joining the Massachusetts senator’s rally against Obama’s nominee for the Treasury, reported Talking Points Memo. This nomination is part of the revolving door between Wall Street banksters and public officials.

Joining Warren is liberal group, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC), which sent an email to its supporters discussing the mistake that is Weiss’ nomination.

The extreme right has power, and that’s something the left hasn’t had much of for a long time. But in the aftermath of the party’s disastrous midterm performance, it’s very possible that the Democratic Party leadership will be facing its own Tea Party-style insurgency from the other side of the spectrum. “You’re going to get a fight within the Democratic Party. There is a substantial disagreement coming up,” Rep. Jerry Nadler, an outspoken Congressional Progressive Caucus member, recently told the Wall Street Journal.

The only question is, how serious a fight will it be? Will it be a polite spat that results in what has happened most often before—the fast marginalization of the left, with the best elements of the various critiques being stitched together by a centrist Hillary Clinton, or whoever is the nominee in 2016? Or are the populists ready to stage their own grassroots rebellion, setting their sights on eradicating all corporate influence from the Democrats and undermining any attempt by President Obama to compromise with Republicans by any means necessary?

Progressive activists such as the feisty Progressive Change Campaign Committee would love to be able to instill some of their own intraparty fear, sharpen their populist pitchforks and prod Democratic leaders leftward. And there is reason to believe this could be their moment.

The rebels offer a message about the chronic unfairness of the system so potent that even the Koch brothers aren’t above poaching it (a recent ad from the Kochs’ political arm chastised newly deposed Sen. Mary Landrieu for flying in private jets, even though the brothers have a few of their own.) The new liberal insurgency is savvy enough to stress issues that poll well and relate to the economic anxieties gripping the electorate, such as increasing Social Security benefits and shrinking the size of Wall Street, instead of chasing stale leftist pipe dreams like nationalizing the health insurance industry.

Liberal backers of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) are throwing their support behind her latest cause: defeating President Obama’s pick for a top Treasury Department spot.

The Progressive Change Campaign Committee is sending emails to backers, calling on them to call members of the Senate Finance Committee and urge them to oppose the president’s nomination of Antonio Weiss.

The administration remains behind the Weiss nomination, and has touted his years of work on complex financial issues as a potential boon at a critical role.
But PCCC is working to scuttle the pick at the committee level.

In the email, the PCCC criticizes Weiss’s work on tax inversions – a corporate restructuring that reduces U.S. tax obligations that has been criticized by the administration — as well as his Wall Street resume.

Backers will also have the option of calling committee members to oppose the pick. A script provided by PCCC argues Weiss lacks the proper experience.

Concerns are continuing to mount over President Barack Obama’s choice of Antonio Weiss for a top Treasury Department post, but now progressives aren’t the only ones saying he’s not a good fit. Prominent financial industry insiders are speaking out, too.

Simon Johnson, the former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, says Weiss has “no known relevant qualifications or experience” to become the next Under Secretary for Domestic Finance. The job requires, among other things, overseeing consumer protection and domestic regulatory functions at Treasury.

In the meantime, progressive groups are rallying behind Warren to try to sink the nomination. CREDO, a progressive activist group, has collected signatures from more than 115,000 people urging the Senate to reject Weiss. On Monday, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee sent an email to its 1 million supporters urging them to contact their senators and tell them to vote no.

Liberal groups aligned with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) are pushing supporters to help in Warren’s fight to prevent banker Antonio Weiss from becoming undersecretary of the Treasury for domestic policy. And they are drawing a hard line in the sand.

On Monday another liberal-aligned organization, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC) sent out an email to supporters saying that Weiss’s nomination “is a big mistake.”

Even if Elizabeth Warren isn’t running for president, her liberal allies are determined to place the Massachusetts senator’s vision at the fulcrum of the Democratic Party’s 2016 primary debate.

The Progressive Change Campaign Committee has deployed one of its top organizers to the early primary state of New Hampshire to ask elected officials and political leaders there to pressure all candidates to take stands on Warren’s agenda – one that includes expanding Social Security benefits, reforming the way Wall Street banks operate and making college more affordable.

“We’re trying to assess who is in and who is out in our strategy to exert pressure to get all Democratic candidates for president to embrace Elizabeth Warren-style ideas,” says Adam Green, the committee’s co-founder.

The Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC), which is closely aligned with Sen. Elizabeth Warren, has a hired an organizer to work full time in New Hampshire ahead of the state’s first-in-the-nation Democratic presidential primary in 2016.

But, with Warren unlikely to run for the White House, the group isn’t supporting any specific candidate. In fact, it’s hoping to convince Democrats and union leaders in the state not to support anyone for the moment, in order to build a non-aligned coalition that can pressure all candidates to adopt a populist economic agenda.

Adam Green, the group’s co-founder, said the PCCC is telling New Hampshire Democrats to “keep your powder dry, don’t rush.”

The Progressive Change Campaign Committee has deployed Democratic organizer Don Weigel to meet with local Democratic Party leaders, county chairs, union leaders, elected officials, and PCCC activists in New Hampshire and begin organizing a local coalition ahead of 2016, ABC’s Kirsten Appleton reports. “We’re organizing in New Hampshire to ensure that all Democratic candidates for president are pressed to actively campaign on an Elizabeth Warren-style agenda of big economic-populist ideas,” said PCCC co-founder Adam Green. “Big ideas like expanding Social Security benefits, reforming Wall Street, and making college more affordable are wildly popular in red, blue, and purple states — and are the path to primary and general election victory for Democrats.”

The Progressive Change Campaign Committee, which delivered funds and field resources to Elizabeth Warren’s Senate allies in 2014, is planning to organize in early presidential primary states, the group announced this morning, with a nascent effort already underway in New Hampshire. Democratic organizer Don Weigel is in the Granite State for meetings with local elected officials and supporters to help build a network for the 2016 presidential campaign. ‘We’re organizing in New Hampshire to ensure that all Democratic candidates for president are pressed to actively campaign on an Elizabeth Warren-style agenda of big economic-populist ideas,’ said PCCC co-founder Adam Green.

There was an emphasis on the issues uniting the two sides: trade agreements, corporate tax reform, infrastructure spending, immigration reform. Obama referred to them as “sweet spots for this group.” In the end, the president pledged himself “open to common sense,” and there was much applause from the CEOs.

Further complicating the White House outreach is the watchfulness of Democratic progressives, who are normally allies of the president but still angry that he didn’t strike a more populist tone in the midterm elections, believing that would have been more successful. They reacted quickly to Wednesday’s meeting at the Business Roundtable. Obama “should spend his final two years in office pushing an economic populist agenda like Elizabeth Warren’s, not delivering more giveaways to big business,” said T.J. Helmstetter, a spokesman for the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, adding that trade deals and corporate tax cuts “are not the kind of big ideas that voters are looking for.”

Hillary Clinton appears to have an easy path to winning the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016 should she run, and that has left many liberals and progressive organizations who harbor deep reservations about her frustrated.

That is an opinion shared by many others on the activist left, says Stephanie Taylor, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee. Ideally, they would like to see somebody like Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., get the nomination.

“Regardless of who runs for president, we’re organizing to ensure every Democratic candidate, including Hillary Clinton, is asked whether they agree with Elizabeth Warren on key economic populist issues,” Taylor told the Washington Examiner.

Democrats’ top message man Chuck Schumer criticized how his own party handled Obamacare’s political strategy on Tuesday, joining a list of prominent Democrats who’ve chastised their own party in recent days as they struggle to come to terms with a crushing defeat earlier this month.

Schumer commented at an event in Washington that Democrats “blew the opportunity the American people gave them” by concentrating on health care during the teeth of the recession in 2009 and 2010, calling it a focus on “the wrong problem.”
But groups that have advocated for broader acceptance populist policies from the “Warren wing” of the party couldn’t help but poke Schumer after his speech.

“If Senator Schumer feels this way, he should support big ideas that positively impact the lives of every American… like breaking up the big banks so they can’t crash our economy again,” said Stephanie Taylor, a Progressive Campaign Change Committee co-founder and boisterous Warren backer, taking a shot at Schumer’s Wall Street ties.

Debates between liberal and “Wall Street” wings, tensions among leadership and rank-and-file members, and the increasing clout of populists in the party pose challenges for Democrats as they work to build a cohesive message and brand identity.

Liberal outside groups actively campaigned against Himes, a former Goldman Sachs executive, saying that naming him chairman would send the wrong message to voters and could discourage liberals from running for Congress.

When House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi instead this week named Rep. Ben Ray Luján of New Mexico as DCCC chairman, the influential Progressive Change Campaign Committee rejoiced, saying that a Himes chairmanship “would have been disastrous for progressives and hurt Democrats’ chances of winning back the majority in 2016.”

Being able to downscale after a campaign ends can be equally important in terms of cost-effectiveness. And when it comes to upscaling and downscaling quickly, the Cloud is the obvious way to go.

That is what the people at Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC) have been working on.

This past year, PCCC has built a software tool called PIES to help candidates run their campaigns according to best practices and without wasting time or money. Candidates can track their fundraising efforts, campaign events and get-out-the-vote progress, launch a campaign website in minutes, collect signatures and endorsements, and engage their supporters with an easy-to-use email blaster. This cycle, 150 candidates used the beta version of PIES to manage their campaigns at the federal, state, and local level.

Democrats lost big on Election Night in 2014, but Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts argued Wednesday that some of the results were positive for the liberal wing of her party.

“Here is the second piece of really good news, we know what to do and the American people get it. They are ready,” Warren said at the Center for American Progress “Making Progress” policy conference at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington. She then launched into a portion of her speech about how some post-election polls found that battle ground voters stood closer to Democrats on certain issues.

Liberal groups have also argued that the 2014 election proved that liberal Democratic policies, like those Warren championed on Wednesday, are the future of the party.

“Warren was the most popular Democrat on the campaign trail for a reason: Her message of taking on Wall Street, reducing student debt, and expanding Social Security benefits is popular everywhere,” wrote Adam Green and Stephanie Taylor, heads of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, in an opinion-editorial for The Hill. “Focusing on big ideas is the path forward for progressives and Democrats. The Warren wing of American politics is ready to lead.”

Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.) believes that House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) passed him over as the next head of House Democratic campaign efforts because of his ties to the financial services industry.

Though Pelosi didn’t choose Rep. Donna Edwards (D-Md.) to chair the DCCC, as Moveon.org had urged her to do, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, which had called on her to not appoint Himes, celebrated her pick.

“In not selecting Jim Himes to lead the DCCC, Nancy Pelosi rejected the Wall Street wing of the Democratic Party,” PCCC co-founder Adam Green said.

The congressman, who has taken more in campaign donations from the investment industry than any other field, has defended his record by citing his work on the Dodd-Frank bill and says he has been a staunch defender of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Fresh off his election to a fourth term, Rep. Jim Himes faced opposition from liberals in his own party who lobbied against the former Goldman Sachs banker in a race for a Democratic leadership post in the House of Representatives.

Himes, who represents Connecticut’s Gold Coast that includes Wall Street workers and an outsized Republican electorate in an otherwise heavily Democratic state, drew fire from liberals contrasting him against populist Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass.

Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, said Warren, who has made opposition to Wall Street excesses her signature political issue, is establishing a populist and winning stance for the Democratic Party.
“Jim Himes would be pushing in an opposite direction,” he said.

The progressive group sent an email that urged recipients to call House minority leader Nancy Pelosi “and tell her that appointing a Wall Street banker who opposes Wall Street bashing is a losing strategy for Democrats.”

Wall Street is indeed a one-way street for U.S. Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn. and not just on maps.

Adept at mining campaign cash for House Democrats from the financial services industry, which he once worked in as a Goldman Sachs executive, Himes said Tuesday that those very same connections likely factored into his getting passed over for his caucus’ top political leadership post.

A request for comment was left Tuesday for Pelosi, who also bypassed the candidates suggested by the liberal PAC, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee — Reps. Donna Edwards, D-Md., and Jared Polis, D-Col.

Still the committee’s co-founder applauded the snub of Himes.

“In not selecting Jim Himes to lead the DCCC, Nancy Pelosi rejected the Wall Street wing of the Democratic Party,” Adam Green said. “Appointing a Goldman Sachs banker to lead the DCCC would be marching House Democrats in the exact opposite direction they need to go in order to win. An economic populist agenda consisting of bold ideas — like breaking up `too big to fail’ banks and jailing Wall Street bankers who broke the law — is wildly popular in red, purple, and blue states.”

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., on Monday appointed Rep. Ben Ray Lujan, D-N.M., to head the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the Democratic Party wing devoted to electing Democrats to the House in 2016.

Himes had been careful not to openly campaign for the post but made little secret of his interest in winning the appointment. Himes’ spokesman, Greg Vadala, said last week that Himes “understands what it takes to run and win competitive races’’ and “would be honored to be considered.’’

A liberal group, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, last week called on Pelosi not to appoint Himes, saying the former Goldman, Sachs executive who represents most of Fairfield County was too cozy with Wall Street. Himes is sensitive to the charge and his spokesman, Vadala, pointed out that Himes sponsored the provisions of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act that placed a measure of control over the high-flying derivatives market.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi announced Monday that U.S. Rep. Ben Ray Luján of Santa Fe will chair the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the political wing of the House Democrats.

A liberal activist group called the Progressive Change Campaign Committee praised Pelosi’s decision — but mostly for not choosing another Congressman who was interested in the job, Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut.

“We thank Leader Pelosi for not selecting Jim Himes to lead the DCCC — thereby rejecting the Wall Street wing of the Democratic Party,” the group’s co-founder Adam Green said in a statement. “In order to win key House races, Democrats must run on big, bold, populist ideas like those championed by Elizabeth Warren. This means recruiting economic populist candidates — especially in red and purple states — and working with them to integrate a populist vision into their campaign messaging. The PCCC will be doing this, and we hope to partner with Rep. Ben Ray Luján and others to achieve success in 2016.”

Nancy Pelosi said Monday she wants Rep. Ben Ray Luján to be the next chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC). The House Minority Leader called the New Mexico Democrat a “dynamic and forward-thinking leader” who would be ideal for the role of recruiting and supporting candidates going into the 2016 election.

The news of Pelosi’s support for Lujan ahead of Tuesday’s vote the position comes in the wake of mounting pressure from progressives to reject Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut, who was also in the running for the top spot at the DCCC. The Progressive Change Campaign Committee blasted Himes as a “Wall Street Democrat” who would “hurt Democratic chances in 2016.”

“The reason Democrats lost in 2014 was that there was not a united and bold Democratic economic vision, it was very much an election about nothing, in some cases, small-bore or conservative ideas,” Adam Green, the co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, told The Hill.

“The real issue is that the Democratic Party has not painted a picture in people’s minds of what a bold, populist Democratic governing agenda looks like.”

Green and his co-founder, Stephanie Taylor, wrote in an op-ed days after the electoral rout that the party needs to coalesce an agenda that aggressively trumpets issue like Wall Street reform, cutting the cost of college and student loans, and expanding Medicare and Social Security. They pointed out that Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts Democrat beloved by their organization, was popular on the stump for many embattled Democrats because she touts that message.

Liberals have high hopes that Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s (D-Mass.) promotion to Democratic leadership will give them more sway in the next Congress.

TJ Helmstetter, director of candidate communications support at the Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC), said Warren’s message “is exactly the direction the party needs to take in order to win again.”

“Warren’s appointment to Senate leadership is a reflection of the leadership she already exerts among the party faithful,” Helmstetter said. “No matter who runs for president in 2016, they’ll need to adopt Elizabeth Warren’s economic populist agenda of big, bold ideas in order to excite voters and win.”