1. United States
2. Ariz.
3. Letter

Hakeem Jeffries Does Not Speak for All Democrats To Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Democratic Members of Congress, the Democratic National Committee, and Democratic Party Leadership: We, the undersigned Democrats, progressives, and Democratic voters, reject the suggestion that the views of Democratic congressional leadership define the boundaries of the Democratic Party. Hakeem Jeffries does not speak for all of us. When Democratic leadership distances itself from Democratic Socialism, Medicare for All, or the use of impeachment when warranted by presidential misconduct, it does not speak for the entire Democratic coalition. We are Democrats too. Our agenda includes a government that works for working people, not merely corporations, billionaires, insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, and wealthy donors. We believe health care is a human right. The United States remains an extraordinary outlier among wealthy democracies in failing to guarantee health coverage to everyone. Americans spend dramatically more on health care than people in comparable nations while millions remain uninsured and millions more struggle with deductibles, premiums, medical debt, prescription costs, and inadequate coverage. Universal health care is not a radical fantasy. Other developed democracies have already demonstrated that universal coverage can be achieved through a variety of systems. Medicare for All deserves serious consideration, not dismissal. Independent analyses have found that single-payer health care could substantially reduce national health expenditures through lower administrative costs, negotiated prices, and elimination of much of the bureaucracy and profit-taking built into our fragmented insurance system. The Congressional Budget Office itself has modeled single-payer systems capable of saving hundreds of billions of dollars annually while providing nearly universal coverage. We also reject the idea that Democratic Socialism is something Democratic leaders should reflexively renounce. Social Security, Medicare, public schools, libraries, fire departments, infrastructure, unemployment insurance, and countless other public institutions embody a basic democratic principle: there are some things we accomplish better when we accomplish them together. And we reject the notion that impeachment should simply be removed from consideration for political convenience. Impeachment is a constitutional mechanism. If a president commits conduct meeting the constitutional standard for impeachment, Congress has an obligation to examine the evidence and act accordingly. No president should be placed beyond accountability because holding that president accountable is considered politically inconvenient. The Democratic Party is a coalition. It includes moderates, liberals, progressives, Democratic Socialists, independents who caucus with Democrats, and millions of voters whose political beliefs cannot be reduced to a label. Leadership does not get to erase those voices. We want a Democratic Party willing to fight for universal health care, economic justice, workers’ rights, voting rights, reproductive freedom, LGBTQ+ equality, Social Security and Medicare, affordable housing, a livable wage, climate action, and genuine constitutional accountability. We are not asking Democratic leadership to agree with every position held by every member of this coalition. We are demanding that leadership stop pretending that its agenda is the only Democratic agenda. Hakeem Jeffries may speak for himself and for the positions he chooses to advocate. He does not speak for all of us. We are Democrats. We are part of this party. And our voices count too.