Progressive Democrats seek to purge the term 'moderate'
By Hanna Trudo - 09/29/21 06:00 AM EDT
Progressives are imploring fellow Democrats to stop using the term “moderate” to describe some lawmakers in their party, arguing it inaccurately labels those holding up President Biden’s agenda as merely staking out a middle-ground approach.
The rhetorical pressure campaign is escalating over what liberals see as Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema’s (D-Ariz.) lack of cooperation with their favored approach to passing social and physical infrastructure legislation simultaneously.
That reluctance has prompted some on the left to cast the duo as intraparty obstructionists with a right-of-center posture on many top priorities. One House Democrat went so far as to say the term is causing “grave harm” to the discourse.
“Referring to the small handful of conservative Democrats working to block the president’s agenda as ‘moderates’ does grave harm to the English language and unfairly maligns my colleagues who are actually moderate yet by and large understand the stakes of this historic moment,” first-term Rep. Mondaire Jones (D-N.Y.) told The Hill on Tuesday.
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https://thehill.com/homenews/house/574399-progressive-democrats-seek-to-purge-the-term-moderate
