Hakeem Jeffries used a bruising Sunday-show round to tell Democrats what he would not put under the party banner: defunding police, open borders, abolishing the Senate, abolishing ICE and Medicare for All.
The House minority leader did not shut the door on Democratic socialists winning seats in Congress. He did make clear on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that their organization’s platform was not his.
“I do not support defunding the police. I do not support open borders. I do not support abolishing the Senate,” Jeffries said.
The New York Democrat also declined to promise a future House vote to abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement if Democrats retake the majority.
Instead, he called for changes at the agency, including body cameras, judicial warrants for home searches and greater accountability for ICE agents.
“We’re committed to dramatically reforming ICE,” Jeffries said.
Medicare for All also got a no from Jeffries, despite his previous support for legislation carrying that name from 2013 through 2021.
“No,” Jeffries said when asked whether he personally backs it now. “I haven’t co-sponsored the Medicare for All legislation that has been introduced over the last several years.”
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Jeffries kept returning to a safer campaign subject for Democrats heading toward the November midterms: prices.
“We’re focused on November 3rd, not January 3rd,” he said, arguing that candidates should be talking about groceries, gas, housing and health care.
The careful distancing act comes as Democratic socialists and their allies have made gains in primaries across the country, raising harder questions inside the party about how much space the left flank should get after Election Day.
Jeffries said winners of Democratic primaries who also prevail in November would be part of the House Democratic Caucus.
“You’re going to have individual members who have been elected in Democratic primaries, and if they are elected in the general in November, will be part of the House Democratic Caucus,” he said.
That did not mean they would define the caucus.
“It’s going to be a broad caucus,” Jeffries said. “There will be progressives, there will be New Dems, there will be Blue Dogs.”
The same ideological fight was being tested through Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s remark that “Woke 1 was crazy,” a line Democratic guests were asked to explain on both NBC and CNN.
NBC’s Kristen Welker asked Rep. Ro Khanna whether he agreed with Ocasio-Cortez that some progressive positions went too far in the 2020s.
“Well, I don’t know what these labels mean,” Khanna replied.
Rather than accept the phrase, the California Democrat listed his own boundaries.
“I’ll tell you what I’ve always stood for. I have never been for defunding police,” Khanna said.
He also said he has “called for abolishing ICE,” putting a clean policy split on display between him and Jeffries.
On CNN’s “State of the Union,” Jake Tapper asked Maryland Gov. Wes Moore to address the same phrase and what Democrats must do to win outside blue states and safe congressional districts.
Tapper described the era as one tied to defunding police, language policing, holiday policing, cancel culture and politics built around oppressor and oppressed groups.
Moore would not take ownership of the label either.
“Well, it’s funny, it’s true — I said I don’t know what Woke 1 is, but frankly, I don’t know what Woke 2 or Woke 3 is either,” Moore said.
He answered with a story about gas prices and a woman he met at a Delmarva Shorebirds game who said she could not afford to drive to her doctor’s appointments.
The “Woke 1” line had already been tied to Francesca Hong, the Madison democratic socialist who narrowly lost Wisconsin’s Democratic gubernatorial primary Tuesday.
Welker asked Khanna whether Hong’s old post calling for getting rid of Thanksgiving had damaged the progressive cause.
Khanna, who endorsed Hong, refused to abandon her after the loss.
“I really feel bad for what happened to Francesca. And I know it’s fashionable to distance yourself. I am not,” Khanna said. “I was proud to endorse her and she’s far more than the caricature that was presented.”
Ocasio-Cortez did not endorse Hong. When Jonathan Karl asked her about Hong on ABC’s “This Week,” she said her focus was “winning back the Congress.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders and the national Democratic Socialists of America also stayed out of the Wisconsin race.
Ocasio-Cortez told Karl that “Woke 1 was crazy” was not her own original phrase. She attributed it to New York City Councilman Chi Ossé, a fellow socialist who used it in May while discussing his 2021 declaration that “a cis white man should not be the next speaker of the Council.”
“I have a local city councilman that has this saying, ‘Woke 1 was crazy,’” Ocasio-Cortez said. “What’s important is that we have to assess what a candidate is saying now.”
She pointed to the pandemic period as a time when the left entertained “any and every policy” aimed at reaching “a better place,” while still calling those debates “quite fruitful.”
Jeffries’ version of the party’s message was narrower.
House Democrats, he said, are selling affordability, not the agenda of the Democratic Socialists of America.
“I don’t support the DSA agenda as has been articulated by the DSA itself,” Jeffries said.
