Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chair Sean Patrick Maloney (N.Y.) is arguing Republicans are using socialism and “defunding the police” to misrepresent his party.
During an interview with Politico, Maloney was asked if the “left’s embrace” of Democratic socialism is problematic for his swing district voters.
“Let’s be careful. When you say the left’s embrace of socialism, the Democratic caucus in the House, the Democratic majority, has never embraced socialism and we are not a party that has ever passed legislation that could be even reasonably associated with socialism,” Maloney said.
He continued, “Before we just internalize and repeat some Republican caricature, I’d just like to flag it and reserve that right to do it throughout the conversation.”
Watch his comments below:
Maloney turned his attention to the media and said some of the things it has “been repeating are in fact not positions that the Democratic majority ever held.”
Politico’s Rachel Bade argued it is not necessarily fair to blame the media for that.
She explained, “You have some of your own members, including members of the squad, who call themselves Democratic socialists.”
Maloney responded, “There is legislation that came out of the 116th Congress. That’s where the Democratic majority is and if you look at the hundreds of bills passed by the Democratic Congress, I’ll defend every one of them, and not one of them had anything to do with socialism or defunding the police.”
Politico’s Eugene Daniels went on to ask Maloney how he combats the mischaracterization of his party by Republicans.
“There are always going to be activists who say things. There’s always going to be one or two members of any congressional caucus that say things that don’t represent the majority position. What I’m telling you is we pass legislation,” Maloney said.
He addd, “That is the statement of where the Democratic party is in the House.”