Nancy Pelosi will have a hard time keeping the ultraprogressives in her caucus quiet.
The White House Correspondents’ Dinner in 2015 included an ingenious skit featuring President Obama and the comedian Keegan-Michael Key. As Mr. Obama stood at a lectern offering vapid pleasantries about White House press coverage, his “anger translator,” portrayed by Mr. Key, lurked behind him acting out what the president was really thinking.
Today, Democrats keep their “anger translators” in-house, among the progressive members of the 116th Congress sworn in last week. Already we’ve heard Rep. Rashida Tlaib, the freshman Democrat from Michigan, announce with an obscenity that her caucus is dead-set on impeaching President Trump. Next came Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, laying out the new House majority’s ambitious agenda—universal health care, free college tuition, a Green New Deal to combat climate change—in an interview with Anderson Cooper that aired Sunday on “60 Minutes.”
There have been some halfhearted attempts by Democratic leaders to distance themselves from Ms. Tlaib’s remarks and Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s plans, but the reality is that both women are expressing views that fall well within the party mainstream. Dutifully, they’re trying to mollify the “resistance” while Democratic leaders appeal to more-moderate and independent voters.
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Jason L. Riley is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a columnist at The Wall Street Journal, and a Fox News commentator. Follow him on Twitter here.
This piece originally appeared in The Wall Street Journal