While progressives point to strong polling in support of Medicare for All and aggressive climate action, the GOP is eager to spend the next several months chipping away at it. | Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images 2020 elections 2020 Democrats’ progressive gamble is about to get real Congressional action could test the party's faith in liberal proposals to tackle climate change, provide universal health care and remake the economy.

Democrats’ embrace of sweeping progressive ideas like Medicare for All and the Green New Deal is about to get its first reality check on Capitol Hill — as both parties make huge bets about which message will sway voters in 2020.

For liberal Democrats, proposals to provide universal health care, combat climate change and create a fairer economy represent the kind of bold agenda they will need to unseat President Donald Trump, a candidate unafraid to make his own brash moves on trade and immigration. But Republicans are seizing on the same proposals to paint Democrats as socialist radicals, while trying to widen the ideological splits already emerging among Trump’s would-be challengers.


Senate Republicans plan to force a vote as early as next week, S.J. Res. 8, on progressives’ Green New Deal climate resolution, which has drawn support from almost all of the chamber’s declared and potential Democratic presidential hopefuls. House Democrats, meanwhile, are set to unveil legislation guaranteeing government-funded health care for all Americans — amid conflicting poll numbers about voters’ willingness to upend the existing health insurance market.

It’s the beginning of what promises to be a series of high-stakes tests that both parties insist will work to their advantage.

“The Republicans are misreading the moment,” said Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), an outspoken liberal on issues like climate change. “We have never been more fired up.”

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In fact, some progressives have invoked Trump’s upset 2016 win as an argument for taking a bold strategy into 2020 — evidence that Democrats should focus more on articulating popular core values and less on worrying about the practicalities. In the same way Trump fired up his base with pledges to build the wall and make America great again, progressives believe Democrats can piece together an even bigger coalition by branding themselves as the party of universal health care and economic equality.

“You could actually credit Donald Trump for this,” said Faiz Shakir, the new campaign manager for Sen. Bernie Sanders’ 2020 run. “The kind of not giving a crap what others think, or what his critics think, and just plowing ahead with a vision has made progressives hungrier for a version of, well, what would that look like [on the left]?”

But top Republicans say they see Democrats veering off a socialist cliff — citing the Green New Deal, H. Res. 109 (116), and S. Res. 59, co-authored by New York freshman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as a prime example.

“It’s entirely fantasy, it’s unrealistic. These are just talking points designed to appeal to the fringe of their party,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas). He added, “It’s ended up causing quite a headache for our colleagues across the aisle who’ve tried to explain exactly what they’re trying to do and how they’re trying to do it.”

The debate in Congress’ opening months follows more than two years of arguments by progressive activists that Democrats need to be more than just the anti-Trump party to succeed in 2020. They say transformative policies are also increasingly necessary to counter major crises like a changing climate and the growing power of the super-rich.

“The center of energy in the Democratic Party is with these kinds of bold, progressive, populist ideas around transforming our economy and democracy,” said Waleed Shahid of Justice Democrats, a group inspired by Sanders’ 2016 run and crucial to the rise of Ocasio-Cortez. “We’re making change happen pretty fast.”

Yet it’s also generated unease among party moderates. And while progressives point to strong polling in support of Medicare for All and aggressive climate action, the GOP is eager to spend the next several months chipping away at it.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s call for a vote on the Green New Deal is aimed purely at driving a wedge through the Democratic Party, forcing liberal senators and vulnerable centrists alike to weigh in on a proposal that envisions remaking the U.S. economy in just a decade. Already, moderate Democratic senators like Debbie Stabenow of Michigan and Joe Manchin of West Virginia have groused publicly about the plan as moving too far, too fast.

Republicans in the House, meanwhile, are pressing for a series of hearings on Medicare for All, certain that enthusiasm for single-payer health care will plummet as voters study the details and trade-offs.

“Democrats’ Medicare for All proposal would force over 150 million Americans to lose their employer or their union-sponsored insurance,” said Oregon Rep. Greg Walden, the top Republican on the House Energy and Commerce Committee. “You want to talk about sabotage? That’s what we should be having a hearing on.”

Democrats’ liberal wing vows to meet that challenge head on. And they’re expecting the party’s growing list of presidential candidates to stand with them through the long, bruising 2020 campaign.

Already, all six Democratic senators running for president have co-sponsored the Green New Deal, and five signed on last year to Medicare for All legislation. Sanders (I-Vt.) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) have sought to further separate themselves from the pack — Sanders is running as a democratic socialist in favor of free college and a break-up of the big banks, while Warren has rolled out plans for a wealth tax and universal child care.

In Congress, House progressives next week are rolling out a detailed road map to single-payer health care — even as party leaders urge a focus on the more immediate, incremental health issues that sparked their midterm electoral wave just months ago.

“What we’re proposing is really a transformation of the health care system to get out the pieces that are so embedded in it that it continues to make health care costs equivalent to 19 percent of GDP,” said Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), a Congressional Progressive Caucus leader who’s penning the Medicare for All bill. “The majority of the American public believes we should have what almost every other industrialized country in the world has.”

Still, Democrats acknowledge they’re inviting intense scrutiny of such transformative proposals — and the reckoning that’s in store if they miscalculate voter enthusiasm for policies that would upend broad swaths of the economy.

One presidential contender, Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), faced immediate blowback for suggesting at a CNN town hall in January that she would support eliminating private health insurance as part of a Medicare for All system. Similarly, the Green New Deal drew an early wave of confusion and gleeful GOP attacks after Ocasio-Cortez’s staff mistakenly distributed a document that included principles not endorsed by the resolution’s supporters — including phasing out nuclear energy and building high-speed rail “at a scale where air travel stops becoming necessary.”

And some moderate Democrats have privately pointed to House progressives’ difficulties securing 100 co-sponsors for their single-payer health care bill as evidence the party’s vocal left wing is overstating support for its policy ideas.

Some 2020 contenders are consciously tacking toward the center in the meantime. On Monday, Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar cast the Green New Deal as “aspirational” despite her endorsement of it, and Medicare for All as something to shoot for down the road — positioning herself instead as a more pragmatic candidate.

“It could be a possibility in the future,” Klobuchar said of single-payer health care. “But I’m looking for what’s working now.”

That’s a balancing act that several Democrats in Congress say they hope the party can strike — aligning with the progressive rhetoric that’s resonated with voters, while pursuing more incremental policies.

“It’s a great conversation starter,” Alabama Sen. Doug Jones, a freshman Democrat facing a tough reelection in 2020, said of the Green New Deal. “What’s proposed in there is a little too aggressive and a little too far right now, but we have got to have a conversation about climate change and what we’re doing to this planet.”

Democrats are similarly warning against litigating the details of moving to a single-payer health system, for fear of bogging down their advantage on health issues and giving Republicans new avenues of attack.

“What’s important is to get your values and your core principles out there,” said Democratic pollster and strategist Celinda Lake. “It’s classic for Democrats to jump right into the middle of the policy.”

Liberals, though, are chafing at the suggestion they limit their ambitions. They contend the GOP will try to paint all Democrats as left-wing firebrands anyway, so there’s little reason not to lean into big solutions that the public finds popular.

“This is actually politicians catching up to the people and the economic realities that they live in,” said former Virginia Rep. Tom Perriello, a Democrat who lost his seat in 2010 after backing Obamacare and a cap-and-trade proposal on climate change. “Taking a good idea and cutting it in half used to make it more popular. Now it sounds tone deaf.”

Indeed, the super PAC aligned with House GOP leadership is already targeting moderate freshmen Antonio Delgado of New York and Colin Allred of Texas over the Green New Deal — even though neither signed onto the resolution.

Those are divisions Republicans aim to exploit in the coming weeks on climate and health care, marking the first in what’s likely to be a string of tough tests for 2020 Democrats grappling with the left’s newfound power and heightened expectations.

“We’ll really see in the 2020 presidential campaign who is actually committed to prioritizing and fighting for these policies,” Shahid said, "and who just wants to be part of the hashtag."