Conor Lamb, House Moderate, on Biden’s Win, ‘the Squad’ and the Future of the Democratic Party – The New York Times

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This interview has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.

Q. What’s your expectation of Joe Biden’s Democratic Party? How do you expect him to fall on the moderate vs. progressive divisions we see in the House?

A. I think that he means what he says when he says, “I ran a Democrat, but I’m going to serve as an American president.” And what that means, I believe, is that every single day, and on every issue, he’s going to be working to get as many people around the table and singing from the same sheet music as you can. And sometimes that will be everyone in the Democratic caucus. Sometimes it will be some people in the Democratic caucus and some Republicans. I think that’s going to change by the issue, but he’s a person that really believes our actual job in Washington, D.C., is to work with each other, compromise to get the best deal we can and then get the thing done. And I believe that too.

What went wrong for House Democrats when they were supposed to pick up seats?

I’m giving you an honest account of what I’m hearing from my own constituents, which is that they are extremely frustrated by the message of defunding the police and banning fracking. And I, as a Democrat, am just as frustrated. Because those things aren’t just unpopular, they’re completely unrealistic, and they aren’t going to happen. And they amount to false promises by the people that call for them.

If someone in your family makes their living in some way connected to natural gas, whether on the pipeline itself, or you know, even in a restaurant that serves natural gas workers, this isn’t something to joke around about or be casual about in your language.

Source Article from https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/08/us/politics/conor-lamb-democrats-biden.html

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