WASHINGTON — Congress’ upheaval over trade has exposed turmoil within a House Democratic caucus that has grown smaller and more liberal in recent years as moderates have been ousted in successive election bloodlettings.
Those who remain must answer to ideologically driven voters and labor unions fighting their own battles for survival, even if it means sidelining their own leaders and humbling their president in the process.
The result is a minority caucus dominated by some of its most liberal members, leaving the few remaining centrists to question whether that will make it harder for their party to retake the seats they need to regain the House majority anytime in the next decade.
Just as the Tea Party wing of the Republican Party has pulled the entire GOP to the right and hampered attempts at compromise on Capitol Hill, some now fear a similar dynamic is taking shape on the left.
“Are we going to try to broaden our caucus,” said Rep. Gerry Connolly of Virginia, who, unlike most Democrats, is an outspoken supporter of President Barack Obama’s trade agenda. “That means listening more to some of these swing districts and suburban districts which have a different economic outlook.”
House Democrats celebrated this month after they derailed Obama’s bid for expedited trade negotiating authority by voting down a linked worker-retraining program they long had supported.
But now it looks like their victory may have been fleeting. Obama maneuvered with congressional Republicans to get the trade package back on track, clearing a key House hurdle Thursday and setting up make-or-break votes in the Senate in coming days.
The revival of the trade package inflamed labor unions and liberal groups who ran ads against otherwise friendly House Democrats and threatened to mount primary campaigns against them.
It’s the kind of vicious infighting that has characterized GOP politics since the Tea Party rose in 2010 and began trying to oust anyone who disagreed with its conservative tenets. Few believe that the fissures within the Democratic Party are as stark, yet leaders are openly alarmed.
