Yet the rhetorical sparring does obscure a broader Democratic unity. The border-funding vote aside, there’s barely any daylight between Democrats on matters actually before the House. The Squad has broken with Pelosi on just two votes so far, according to ProPublica’s tracker. The gap between the party’s moderate and left wings is relatively small, too. Ocasio-Cortez and Representative Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey, a co-chair of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus, have parted ways on just 13 percent of votes; Omar and Representative Max Rose, who’s more pragmatic than ideological, on 7 percent of votes.
These numbers can mislead. We’re only a few months into the Congress, and there are plenty of opportunities for bigger gulfs to appear; partisans agree on most things most of the time because most votes aren’t on hot-button issues. Nor does it make sense to pretend that everything’s copacetic. Rose and Omar tangled very publicly over remarks she made about Israel, some of which he considered anti-Semitic.
Even acknowledging these facts, there’s a world of difference between these dustups and the veritable civil war among Republicans when they controlled the House. The House Freedom Caucus, the conservative GOP coalition, made the lives of Republican Speakers John Boehner and Paul Ryan impossible and eventually hounded them into retirement. In the previous Congress, House Freedom Caucus Chair Mark Meadows voted against Ryan on a third of all votes.
