No more 'wimpy politics': Van Hollen pushes Dems to get off the sidelines

[Celerity]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/09/24/van-hollen-democrat-senate-oppose-trump/

https://archive.ph/3zdKK



During more than two decades in Congress, Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland has earned a reputation as a mainstream policy wonk and loyal lieutenant to Democratic leaders. So it came as something of a shock this month when Van Hollen derided top Democrats for failing to endorse New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, a 33-year-old democratic socialist.

“Many Democratic members of the Senate and the House representing New York have stayed on the sidelines” in the race, even as Mamdani has captured the public’s imagination by focusing on “ensuring that people can afford to live in the place where they work,” Van Hollen told a cheering crowd of party activists in Des Moines. “That kind of spineless politics is what people are sick of.”

One of the targets of Van Hollen’s ire, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-New York), quickly dismissed the attack. (“Chris Van Who?” quipped a Jeffries spokesman.) But Van Hollen’s emergence as a progressive warrior underscores the depth of frustration with Democrats’ muddled response to President Donald Trump.

“This is just one more indication of how far removed the Democratic leadership is from where the American people are, and it explains why the Democratic Party is polling at the lowest level in perhaps many, many decades,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont). “The Democratic base wants their leadership to stand up to oligarchy. … And you have a leadership which in many ways is refusing to do that.”

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