Press Coverage

To obstruct or not? It’s the question churning inside the Democratic Party after its historic Senate losses a week ago. Add to that a secondary one: Just how much legitimate, ideological resistance to Republican proposals will voters tolerate?

“The reason for Democrats to filibuster isn’t obstruction for its own sake. It’s to stick up for millions of everyday people who will be harmed by right-wing politics,” said Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee. His sinking fear is that Democrats will play it too safe and lose anyway. “Is the theory about winning in 2016 that passing Republican bills that hurt Americans will do it?”

While progressive activists praised Democrats’ move to elevate Warren, they are fretting over how the leadership will respond when faced with Republican legislation they oppose on taxes, health care, Social Security and the environment. “The reason voters didn’t vote was because Democrats didn’t stand for a big, bold, populist agenda like the one Elizabeth Warren is pushing Democrats to adopt,” Green said.

“There is some tension,” he added. “The large majority of the Democratic caucus agrees we need to fight but there are certainly some that crazily believe voters want Washington to pass something—anything—even if it means cutting Social Security for Grandma.”

Instead of running away from the progressive accomplishments of the Obama era, he embraced them, railing against bankers, advocating for student loan reform—even defending the Affordable Care Act. Franken ran as an Elizabeth Warren-style Democrat, running a populist campaign that didn’t shirk discussion of the specific policies Democrats could pursue to help the middle class. And voters rewarded him. “This wasn’t a safe seat,” Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, said in an e-mail. “He earned his victory by being a proud populist Democrat for six years and inspiring voters.”

A major progressive group is hoping to pressure House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) against appointing a congressman close to Wall Street as chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC).

The Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC) sent an email to more than a million members on Thursday, urging them to “call Nancy Pelosi right now and tell her Jim Himes appointment would hurt Democratic chances in 2016.”

The Progressive Change Campaign Committee email was sent following victory for the liberal base. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) joined Senate leadership on Thursday and will act as a liaison between Democrats and the party base. Warren has aggressively pursued tighter regulations on large banks.

The news that Senate Democrats are adding Elizabeth Warren to their leadership team raises an important question about the trajectory of the party’s most popular figure not named Hillary Clinton: Will she be co-opted by the establishment?

For the moment, Warren’s progressive fans are ecstatic over her promotion, symbolic or not. “There’s really not much of a downside. We’re pretty psyched,” said Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, which led a Draft Warren for Senate effort in 2012. Green argued that Warren’s elevation was a sign that her liberal agenda was winning the battle for the future of the Democratic Party. “It’s a huge imperative for progressives and a political imperative for Democrats to remold the party in Elizabeth Warren’s image,” he said.

As for whether Warren would have to become a saleswoman for policies she may not support, Green said he was unconcerned. “Elizabeth Warren has kept it real since entering the Senate,” he said. Added influence, even in the unpopular halls of official Washington, remains important. “The whole point of pressuring from the outside is to change what happens on the inside,” Green said.

Senator Elizabeth Warren will be part of the Democrats’ leadership team in the Senate, the party decided on Thursday morning. At the urging of Majority Leader Harry Reid, a new position was created for Warren: strategic policy adviser to the Democratic Policy and Communications Committee.

The Progressive Change Campaign Committee, a major Warren backer, immediately sent a triumphant e-mail blast to one million PCCC members, declaring that “This is a good reminder that when we invest early in progressive leaders, it’s not just about winning elections in the short term — it’s about building power over time.”

Vice President Joe Biden will join Sen. Elizabeth Warren and other leading progressives in addressing a closed-door gathering of elite liberal donors — a roster of speakers that notably doesn’t include Hillary Clinton.

“Ideas are what inspires many of these donors — big, positive ideas like those that Elizabeth Warren is advocating,” said liberal operative Adam Green, who plans to attend the conference. The group he co-founded, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, worked to draft Warren into her 2012 Senate race, and it is among the second tier of groups that the Democracy Alliance recommends its donors support. “My guess is there will be a big appetite among progressive donors to champion bigger and bolder ideas than the current White House is championing,” said Green, citing Warren’s support for making college more affordable, tightening financial regulations and expanding Social Security.

The moves are helping to rally a dispirited Democratic base while re-establishing Obama’s political leadership after he was sidelined during the midterms.

Adam Green, a co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, said the efforts on net neutrality and climate were “great news, and the kind of big ideas that America needs — and that voters need to associate with Democrats.”

But, Green argued, Obama needs to keep his foot on the accelerator, fighting for additional “bold ideas” championed by progressives like expanding Social Security benefits, taking on Wall Street and making college more affordable.

The Progressive Change Campaign Committee is asking its members to lobby House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi against choosing Connecticut U.S. Rep. Jim Himes, D-4th District, as the next head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

Why does the group, which backs progressive members like Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., oppose appointing Himes as DCCC chairman?

Because they see Himes as too sympathetic to Wall Street.

In a blast e-mail, the group cited a Businessweek article that said, “Wall Street doesn’t have many friends in Washington these days—especially among Democrats on Capitol Hill. There is one House Democrat who’s shown some sympathy for Wall Street: Jim Himes. A former Goldman Sachs (GS) investment banker . . . he isn’t shy about defending the industry or decrying Wall Street bashing.”

MSNBC reported that Clinton and her team have scheduled an unlikely powwow with leaders at the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, the small Democratic group most strongly aligned with Warren and the populist economic agenda championed by Sanders.

Progressive Change Campaign Committee co-founders Adam Green and Stephanie Taylor are among them. They sent a message to Democrats after the midterms, scolding the party for engaging in a “Seinfeld-ian election about nothing” and declaring that “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.”

Because when the real campaign begins, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, Warren and Sanders will all be there. Sanders is the most likely to actually run against her, and the Warren faction is a necessary ally in winning the Democratic primary.

Advisers to Hillary Clinton and a co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC) are planning a meeting, according to the group, which is an enthusiastic backer of the ideas of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.).

PCCC co-founder Adam Green told MSNBC, which first reported the plans for the meeting, that the group talked to Clinton’s camp and a meeting is coming “very soon.”

He did not say which advisers he is meeting with. He also encouraged other liberal groups to get involved, telling MSNBC, “Individual meetings are useful, but progressive movement-wide meetings would be really smart for her.”

The PCCC and other liberal groups could encourage Clinton to increase her populist messaging, similar to Warren.

“Hillary Clinton may be realizing that Elizabeth Warren’s economic populist positions are the path to electoral success in 2016,” PCCC’s Green said in a statement after Clinton praised Warren at an event in Boston last month. “Both in the primary and general election.”

Hillary’s critics on the left may finally have the opportunity they’ve been waiting for.

Adam Green, the co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, one of the groups most closely associated with the so-called “Warren wing of the Democratic Party,” said his organization reached out to Clinton’s camp before the election and that a meeting was “very soon.”

He declined to name the Clinton advisers with whom he’s been in contact, saying discussions have so far been limited to “conversations about having conversations.” “We want to keep as open a line of communication with Hillary Clinton and her team as possible,” he told msnbc.

The meeting will hopefully be a precursor to a larger summit with more progressive leaders and Clinton herself. “The more the merrier,” Green said. “Individual meetings are useful, but progressive movement-wide meetings would be really smart for her.”

Their message is that Clinton should adopt the kind of economic inequality issues championed by Warren, both for substantive and political reasons. “This is the path to victory in the primary and general election,” Green and co-founder Stephanie Taylor wrote in an op-ed in The Hill.

Obama’s statement came right in the middle of a flurry of meetings the FCC is having this week with all parties in an effort to find a solution. One of these groups, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC), was behind a 120,000-person petition in support of net neutrality, and was also happy with the news: “White House support for reclassifying the Internet as a public utility is great news, and the kind of bold executive action that America needs,” it said in a statement.

Both the EFF and PCCC noted, however, that despite the strong views put forward by the President, it is the FCC that will decide. “The fight isn’t over yet,” the EFF pledged, “we still need to persuade the FCC to join him.”

In its January ruling, the court said the FCC can regulate Internet providers if the agency reclassifies them as “common carriers” — private companies that sell their services to all consumers without discrimination, like utilities, rather than tailoring their rates for different types of consumers.

Back in 2010, when it crafted the open Internet rules, the FCC chose not to invoke this option — calling broadband “telecommunications services” under Title II of The Telecommunications Act — because it wanted to refrain from overly regulating the Internet. Chairman Wheeler has said “I won’t hesitate to use Title II,” but says that another shot at rule-making would be faster and avoid litigation.

Some net neutrality supporters, including the Progressive Change Campaign Committee and its NoSlowLane.com campaign, have latched onto the idea of treating the net “like water.” On Wednesday, Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., joined that movement, writing to Wheeler that “this approach will allow the FCC to get the policy right and avoid the need to water down essential open Internet protections out of a concern about inadequate authority.”

Reaction was swift Monday to the President’s call for reclassifying Internet Access under Title II.

CTIA – The Wireless Association called it a “gross overreaction,” Verizon called it a “gratuitous” and “radical” reversal, while Title II proponents were celebrating.

“White House support for reclassifying the Internet as a public utility is great news, and the kind of bold executive action that America needs,” said the Progressive Change Campaign. “In the wake of the 2014 elections, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee is calling for a Democratic Party of ‘big ideas,’ and this is a great example of what that means — aggressive, creative ways to level the playing field. Working people and small businesses depend on the Internet as a utility, and it’s time for the FCC and Chairman Wheeler to act.”

Rep. Mike Honda declared victory Friday morning over challenger Ro Khanna, who conceded the nationally watched, Democrat-on-Democrat race about eight hours later.

Unofficial returns updated late Friday showed that Khanna, a former Obama administration official who lives in Fremont, closed his gap with Honda to 3,658 votes, or about 3.66 percentage points. It was the slimmest margin since results started coming in Tuesday night, but still too high a hurdle.

“This win belongs to you,” Honda told a throng of cheering, chanting supporters who gathered at his campaign office Friday morning near Newark’s New Park Mall. “We looked at the numbers and said that with the remaining votes for this congressional district, no matter which way it falls, we will still prevail.”

The majority of the candidates Mayday backed were Democrats, and 2014 was rather unkind to their party. Senate Democrats lost seven seats, with another two still hanging in the balance, while House Democrats lost between 14 and 18 seats depending on votes not yet counted.

“It was a bad year for Democratic candidates,” said Adam Green, executive director of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, which managed the majority of Mayday’s political efforts.

He pointed to the Michigan House race between Upton, chairman of the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee, and challenger Clements. Upton had been headed toward what looked like an easy victory, just as in all his previous elections, until Mayday spent more than $2 million against him. Upton ultimately won re-election, but he did so with his lowest margin of victory ever while emptying his campaign war chest.

“The fact that Fred Upton was forced to scramble for his political life — that was the goal, to change the political culture,” Green said.

Democrat Jeff Merkley was handily winning a second U.S. Senate term Tuesday over Republican Monica Wehby, a political newcomer who was hindered by accusations of past stalking and campaign plagiarism.

With about 66 percent of the expected votes compiled unofficially by the Oregon secretary of state, Merkley was leading Wehby, 55 percent to 38 percent. Three minor-party candidates split the rest.

Merkley drew a visit by Vice President Joe Biden, and two visits from Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

“After a successful first term, we expect Jeff Merkley to play an even more active national progressive leadership role — fighting alongside Elizabeth Warren for big ideas like holding Wall Street accountable, reducing student debt, and expanding Social Security benefits,” says Laura Friedenbach, who spoke for the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, which raised $93,000 in small donations and made 97,000 telephone calls for Merkley.

Rep. Mike Honda held a substantial but narrowing lead over Democratic challenger Ro Khanna on Wednesday, with both campaigns sounding defiant as tens of thousands of vote-by-mail ballots remained uncounted.

Unofficial returns in the nationally watched race showed Honda led Khanna by 4.46 percentage points — a significantly slimmer margin than the 7-point lead Honda held in the earliest returns.

Some of Honda’s liberal allies are trying to make his re-election sound like a done deal already. The Progressive Change Campaign Committee called it “a victory to the Elizabeth Warren wing against the corporate wing” of the Democratic Party.

“Ro Khanna is a corporate conservative who ran as a Democrat in name only, who called Mike Honda ‘too liberal’ in smear attacks,” the committee said in a statement. “His Big Money donors should demand a refund.”

Minnesota U.S. Sen. Al Franken won a resounding re-election victory Tuesday, defeating Republican challenger Mike McFadden, a businessman making his first run at political office.

“I am so honored and so humbled and so grateful to the people of Minnesota,” Franken told a chanting, cheering crowd at a downtown Minneapolis election party. “Thank you for taking a chance on me six years ago. And thank you for giving me the chance to keep working for you in Washington.”

Franken’s easy victory was a stunning contrast to his 2008 razor-thin win against former GOP Sen. Norm Coleman. That came only after an excruciating eight-month recount and a margin of just 312 votes.

While bands played and drinks were poured at DFL Party election headquarters at the Minneapolis Hilton, party Chairman Ken Martin called Franken’s win “a really sweet victory, to be able to go to bed tonight and not have to wake up to a recount, knowing that he’s going to be a U.S. senator again.”

If American voters want to see the minimum wage raised, they sure have a funny way of showing it.

Binding ballot initiatives that would raise the minimum wage passed by wide margins in four red states on Tuesday night. And yet the Democratic candidates who’ve been championing a minimum wage hike all year long got trounced in elections from coast to coast. The Republican Party, which has steadfastly opposed raising the federal minimum wage, took control of the Senate and picked up even more seats in the House.

And while Republicans are saying that their victories mean voters want Obama to work with the GOP-controlled Congress, progressives urged him to avoid moderating his administration’s economic priorities.

“The brand of the Democratic Party needs to be as clear and strong as the brand of minimum wage and other progressive priorities that voters overwhelmingly supported yesterday,” Progressive Change Campaign Committee co-founder Stephanie Taylor said in a statement to HuffPost. “It’s their only route back to power. That’s why we’re calling for President Obama to make Elizabeth Warren’s agenda the center of his 2015 agenda, so that Democrats can rebuild a brand about economic issues again.”

The election’s over, and now it’s official: The Democrats got crushed. For the first time since the Party won the House and Senate in 2006, Congress is back in Republican hands. As of midnight, the GOP had a 52-seat majority. We won’t know the exact number until Louisiana holds a runoff race in December, and in Alaska, the race was too close to call, but it looks like the GOP will win those races, too. Republicans also destroyed Democrats in governor’s races: Rick Scott in Florida, Scott Walker in Wisconsin, and Rick Snyder in Michigan all won reelection, and Republicans even picked up liberal states like Maryland, Massachusetts, and Illinois.

Already the finger-pointing over why the president didn’t play a larger role in the midterms has begun. The president had almost no presence on the campaign trail this year, in large part because Democrats didn’t want him there. “The White House failed to define any agenda for voters in 2014,” Stephanie Taylor and Adam Green, the co-founders of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, said. “Elizabeth Warren was the most popular campaigner in 2014 for a reason: Her clear economic-populist message of reforming Wall Street, reducing student debt, and expanding Social Security benefits is popular everywhere. Red, purple, and blue states.”

Dissatisfied with President Obama’s leadership and dismayed by the failure of both parties to work together on big problems, Americans voted Tuesday to shake things up.

The result: They just may have made those things worse.

Among some Democrats, too, the lessons of Tuesday’s elections are not to compromise but to confront.

“There are three basic directions that things could go,” says Adam Green of the liberal Progressive Change Campaign Committee. “One is really big bad ideas, like lowering corporate taxes. Two is lowest-common-denominator, small-bore ideas that paper over differences and don’t make anybody happy. And the third is a debate about big, bold, economic-populist, Elizabeth Warren ideas,” he says of the outspoken Massachusetts senator. “That’s the debate that Americans deserve.”

With less than 24 hours left until polls open, Democrats and Republicans scrambled Monday to turn out every possible vote for their candidates. Party strategists in key states scrutinized early vote statistics and weather reports ahead of what both sides expect to be a number of nail-bitingly close contests.

Democrats were once certain that in Iowa, Rep. Bruce Braley (D) would beat state Sen. Joni Ernst (R) by a wide margin. In a conference call with members of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee on Saturday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid — whose job is on the line Tuesday — said losing Iowa would mean losing the Senate.

“What Joni Ernst would mean, coming to the United States Senate, is that Mitch McConnell would be the leader of the Senate, someone who agrees with her on virtually everything,” Reid said on the call. “If we win Iowa, we’re going to do just fine.”

In Minnesota, Clinton expanded on her economic priorities, saying that before the financial crisis “a lot of us were calling for regulating derivatives and other complex financial products, closing the carried-interest loophole, getting control of skyrocketing CEO pay.”

It was a line that raised eyebrows given the deregulatory policies of Bill Clinton’s administration. But progressive activists, who have criticized Hillary Clinton’s practice of giving highly-paid speeches to groups including financial firms, welcome such statements.

“It’s baby steps in the right direction after $200,000 speeches at Goldman Sachs,” said Adam Green of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, said Saturday that a Republican takeover of the Senate will likely depend on the outcome of the Iowa Senate race.

“What Joni Ernst would mean, coming to the United States Senate, is that Mitch McConnell would be the leader of the Senate, someone who agrees with her on virtually everything. Think what that would mean to our country,” Reid said Saturday, according to Roll Call.

Republican Joni Ernst is neck and neck with Rep. Bruce Braley, the Democratic candidate. Reid was participating in a conference call organized by the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, which was phone banking for Braley.