On Tuesday’s broadcast of MS NOW’s “Morning Joe,” House Democratic Caucus Chair Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-CA) responded to a question on Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed and Hasan Piker by saying that “The party isn’t lurching too far left. But races are contests between two individuals.”
Author Donny Deutsch asked, “Congressman, the Democrats are certainly set up for a blue wave. The only thing I think could hurt them that they can snatch [defeat from the jaws of victory] is if they’re just too radical. You’ve got El-Sayed, who’s still kind of partnering with Hasan Piker or whatnot. And the Republicans are going to run a campaign saying these guys are radical, they hate America, all of the above, that we deserved 9/11, they’re going to tar them with that stuff. What does the party do overall to kind of deal with that and make sure that the party does not lurch too far left and hurt themselves?”
Aguilar answered, “The party isn’t lurching too far left. But races are contests between two individuals. And so, where this has come up, and we’ve seen this already, Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA) is going into Republican districts, going into Democratic districts, and he’s standing next to folks and he’s saying Democrats are Communists, right? And, some of the members that we have are bright blue. And some of them come from rural communities. They have a brand and they’re known in their districts and they’re not Communists. And so, I think these are contests between Democrats and Republicans. I think Speaker Johnson is trying to inject this. And I think there are folks whose interest is to inject that. I can tell you, the Democratic Caucus believes in capitalism. We believe in the rule of law. Those are the things that we’re going to support legislatively. We’re going to continue to do that. And to the extent that we can and should speak more to that, we will.”
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