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Tweet Share Share Comment I love talking politics. But when I sit down to watch the State of the Union tonight, there will be one thing going through my head: This could have been an email. For years, that’s how the State of the Union worked. Well, not an email. It was a letter. That’s how Thomas Jefferson delivered his constitutionally mandated update. But in 1913, Woodrow Wilson delivered his remarks in person, and for better or for worse, the tradition has stuck.
In recent years, this event has become known less for the policy priorities it articulates than for the memes it inspires. Remember when a GOP congressman interrupted Barack Obama and called him a liar? Remember when Nancy Pelosi ripped up Donald Trump’s speech? Last year, it was Marjorie Taylor Greene who made news—for crowing at Biden in a dramatic white coat.
I’ve been wondering what it will be like to be in the room this evening, bracing myself for this year’s outbursts. So, I called up someone who will be, and I asked if she looks forward to it or dreads it. “Maybe a little of both,” said Pramila Jayapal, who represents Washington state. She’s also the leader of Congress’ progressive caucus. “I really looked forward to it when we had all three chambers, because I knew it was going to be a preview of all the incredible things that we were going to try to get done.”
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This year, as much as Joe Biden might want to put on a display of force, he’s facing stiff headwinds on Capitol Hill. In an election year, he’s facing stiff headwinds at the ballot box, too. If you look at the polling, part of the president’s problem is that he seems to be losing young people, progressives—exactly the kind of people in Jayapal’s caucus. So ahead of tonight she’s been working behind the scenes to shape what Biden has to say.
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“We have been corresponding with the White House, and I hope that some of the things that we’re pushing for get in to the speech,” she said. “We always talk about the opposition agenda, which is ‘We’re better than Trump.’ But we also have all these things that we’ve already accomplished and also things that we want to do, our proposition agenda. And I’m really looking forward to hearing the president inspire us.”
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On Thursday’s episode of What Next, we spoke with the leader of the House progressive caucus about the State of the Union, 2024, and why she’s (still) routing for Biden, even though his campaign is making her nervous. Our conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.
Mary Harris: I want to talk about exactly what you want the president to say tonight, but I want to start by asking about this thing you’ve been saying in interviews. You’re an unequivocal, enthusiastic supporter of Joe Biden, but you’ve also said very clearly that you think at this point right now, the Biden coalition has fractured.
And to me, that’s notable because when Joe Biden came into office, you were very clear and gave him a lot of praise for bringing together progressives and moderates, getting them all at the same table, and really pushing through some things that made you quite optimistic about his presidency. When did you begin to see this fracturing you’re talking about now? And what was the issue that made it clear the fracturing was happening?
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Pramila Jayapal: There was definitely a shift in the third year of his presidency when we lost the House and when we started to move towards the presidential election. There was a change in staffing, obviously, and a lot of the strong progressives throughout the administration had done an amazing job for the first two years. We got a lot accomplished. And they left. So there were new relationships to be formed. That was part of it.
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But the bigger issues emerged in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel and then the corresponding posture that President Biden took towards Israel with unconditional support. And as the humanitarian crisis continued, I was early to call for a cease-fire because I saw what was happening, and I saw that Netanyahu had literally stood against a two-state solution. So I do think that was the beginning.
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I am still supporting the president. And his economic agenda is important. But I also am not shy about making it clear that we cannot expect that progressives are just going to turn out because Donald Trump is worse.
We just saw the result in Michigan where 100,000 plus people turned out to vote uncommitted rather than vote for Joe Biden.
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Exactly. And it was a significant vote because it was organized around what is happening in Gaza. What I’ve tried to explain to the White House over and over again is that this is an issue of deep moral consequence, because people really believe at the core that it is untenable for the United States to be complicit in this war. We are the largest funder of military aid to Israel. Eighty-three percent of the bombs that have been dropped in Gaza are U.S. bombs. And yet we’re air-dropping 38,000 meals into Gaza when there’s 500,000 people starving because Israel won’t allow humanitarian aid to go through the border. So, we could lose this election over Democrats’ and the president’s position on what is happening in Gaza.
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There needs to be a dramatic policy shift. I believe we can still win, but I think it’s got to come soon. And then there’s got to be a very deliberate effort to respect where progressives are, to reach out to people, and to really build the kind of relationships that we had to build in the coalition for 2020. That doesn’t come just by saying to people, “Well, you should just vote for Joe Biden over Donald Trump.” That’s not how it works.
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Just this weekend, Vice President Kamala Harris gave a speech in Selma, Alabama, to mark the 59th anniversary of the Bloody Sunday civil rights attacks. When she spoke, she called for a cease-fire. Was that the beginning of the moral clarity that you’re looking for? To me, it felt like the administration’s soft-launching of tougher language when it comes to Israel.
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That’s how I saw it, too. And she didn’t just say “cease-fire.” She said “immediate cease-fire,” which was a big change. This has not happened before from the administration. It was good, strong language. Now we need to back it up with a policy shift, because rhetoric is one thing, but we are continuing to fund this aid. And I don’t believe we should be providing any more offensive military aid to Israel. I believe we need to now be pushing Israel to put at the forefront aid into Gaza, reconstruction of Gaza, returning of the hostages, and most importantly, an actual plan, perhaps with new leadership from both Palestinians and Israelis, so that we can get to a long-term peace settlement for both Palestinians and Israelis.
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You’ve talked about this fracturing of the Democratic coalition. I wonder whether calling for a cease-fire, full-throatedly, might alienate a different corner of the Democratic coalition, different than the progressive corner. And I say that because when I went to Thanksgiving, I sat next to a relative who would deeply disagree with you on the Israel issue. She’d argue that Israel has a right to defend itself in Gaza. And she’s an incredibly strong Democrat. What do you tell voters like that?
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Well, I think we all agree Israel had a right to defend itself. One of the saddest things for me is that there was so much unity and support for Israel in the days and the moments after Oct. 7.
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She would disagree with you on that. She would say there wasn’t enough speaking out for Israeli Jews in the wake.
It’s very difficult to speak to 100 percent of people on this issue because people do have very strong feelings. But the support for a cease-fire has continued to increase as people have seen what is happening in Gaza. I mean, 30,000 people have been killed and 21,000 of them are women and children. We have babies who are dying of starvation—15 just in the last couple of days. I’ve talked to a lot of my Jewish friends—in fact, Zionists who are very strongly in support of security for Israel but don’t see the path that we’re on producing that. Even some of the hostage families are saying we need a cease-fire so we can get out the hostages. The only time we’ve ever had hostages released, well, largely, has been during the last temporary cease-fire.
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There are Israelis and Palestinians and Americans from both diaspora communities who want to work towards peace. Maybe we can’t get 100 percent, but certainly if you look at, the polling across the country, the vast majority of Americans do believe that it is very important for us to stop the killing in Gaza, to have a cease-fire or a cessation of hostilities, and to work towards a long-term solution. [Editor’s note: It’s the majority of Democrats who say Israel’s gone too far in the Gaza war. And about half of all Americans.]
Another big issue Jayapal is hoping to see Biden—and her party at large—switch gears on is immigration. After House Republicans tanked a bipartisan immigration reform bill last month, Jayapal says it’s time for Democrats to remember their principles.
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I have been distressed by the fact that I see some Democrats doing what Democrats have done for a long time, which is trying to out-Republican Republicans. I don’t think it works. I’ve worked on the issue for 20 years. It isn’t the answer. What I hope the president does is bring a really inclusive message on immigration to the State of the Union and also make the case that the border is not a line that just operates on its own. The chaos at the border is driven by the fact that we have chaos in our immigration system. Our legal immigration system has not been fixed in 30 years, and we need to make the connection for Americans between those two things and make the case for the fact that Republicans continue to block us from doing the kinds of reforms that would actually bring not only security to the border but also would help our economy thrive, help our families thrive, and help our country thrive.
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It’s interesting to me you’re talking about immigration because in the Senate, Democrats and Republicans spent a long time negotiating a deal on immigration that was shut down when Donald Trump said, “We can’t give Joe Biden a win. This is an election year.” But a lot of progressives were really upset by the negotiating that was taking place in the Senate and the things that were coming out of that deal. But then there were other people saying, “Well, this is good politics, because now we can say the Republicans shut us down. We would have come to you. We would have given you aggressive stances on the border.” At one point, Joe Biden talked about shutting the border down. What do you make of that gamble?
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Look, the Republicans have never wanted to fix the immigration issue. They want to leave it out there as a political tool and to drive xenophobia and racism and fear. That’s what we progressives have been saying for a long time is: “Don’t fall into this trap of only doing harsh enforcement.” What we’ve seen over time is that harsh immigration policies don’t work. They didn’t work under Donald Trump. We all fought them. To see Democrats embracing some of those things with no conversation at all about these underlying questions of a pathway to citizenship and real reforms that would actually fix things at the border was deeply disappointing. But in the end, Republicans proved exactly what we were saying. They wouldn’t even go for the bill that Mitch McConnell called the harshest immigration enforcement bill. And so they showed their true colors. Hopefully Democrats can come back together now and show people that this is what we’re talking about. Republicans don’t want to fix this problem. Democrats do. Here’s our solutions.
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One of the other things the president is sure to talk about at the State of the Union is reproductive rights, because it is an issue that is incredibly important to voters right now. But I’ve heard some frustrated young voters basically throw up their hands and say, “It doesn’t matter how I vote in November or if I vote in November, because right now, if I’m in Texas, I can’t get the health care I need, and Joe Biden isn’t able to change that.” Biden talks about passing legislation that would codify Roe v. Wade, but doing that would involve abolishing the filibuster, which I know you approve of but it’s something that a lot of people in the Senate have resisted. So the question becomes: Why does it matter? When you’re faced with a voter like that, how do you reach them?
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Look, we have to change not just the rulers—the people who are in office—but we also have to change the rules. We have rules that we’re stuck with, and the filibuster is one of them. Joe Biden has said that he would be supportive of reforming the filibuster so that we can codify abortion rights, so that we can codify voting rights. I think we need to get rid of it completely. But we need at least 50 votes in the Senate. And right now, we theoretically have 48. Let’s try to get a majority of 51 or 52 in the Senate, and then let’s change the rules.
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The reality is the filibuster is a Jim Crow legacy rule that stops us from doing so many things that not just young voters but voters across this country want. We have to show young people the path, because they’re so tired of hearing us say that we’re going to do all these things but not talking to them about how we’re going to do them. If we explain to people that we need at least a 51-, 52-vote majority in the Senate, and that we are going to demand of our senators that they get rid of the filibuster so that we can do all these things, that is a pathway. But we’ve got to lay it out for people. We can’t just say, “Trust us, we’re going to get it done,” because they’ve trusted us and we haven’t explained to them that the rules don’t allow it.
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View Transcript We’ve talked a bit about this fractured Democratic coalition that you feel like you’re staring at right now. When will you know that coalition is coming back together again?
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It’s really a feeling of momentum on the ground. I am a very intuitive person in politics. Back in 2016 when everyone thought that Hillary Clinton was going to win, I was pretty alone in saying Trump is using xenophobia, racism, sexism, and I think he’s going to win.
He’s using the greatest hits?
Yeah. And I’m a woman of color. I know exactly what this looks like. So, I predicted that he was going to win. And unfortunately, I was right. This time around, and I’ve shared this with the White House, I am seeing that fracturing on the ground, the same kind of thing that I was feeling in 2016. I couldn’t feel the energy of our progressive base.
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Democrats for too long have focused on a swing voter that they define as the independent white suburban woman. She is extremely important. We need her. But what we forget is that the biggest base of swing voters are young people, people of color, progressives who have to be respected and brought into the process because they won’t swing to Donald Trump, but they will swing out to the sidelines and not vote at all if they don’t feel like they’re being heard, listened to, and brought into the coalition in an active, deliberate way.
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You’re saying a very terrifying thing in such a calm way.
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Well, yeah, it is terrifying. I think Donald Trump is terrifying. I lived through that first term. I was elected the same night that Donald Trump was elected. And I remember speaking at my first event as a congresswoman-elect the morning after in front of weeping people at our city hall and trying to hold things together for people—to give hope and to allow people to feel like their voices still mattered.
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But I’m also hopeful because I don’t think that things are set by polls months out from the election. I do feel that the momentum and the work we have to do organizing and the policy shifts that have to happen—the White House has to understand how important the progressive base is. I feel like they really got it in the first two years. They really got it in 2020 when we had the Biden-Sanders unity task forces. And Joe Biden made a real effort to reach out to all different parts of the coalition. We need that again. And we need the importance, the dedication, the respect, and the policy changes.
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