Five years ago progressive Democrats seemed to be on the rise. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez had just ousted a moderate Democrat, and Senator Bernie Sanders looked like he could win the party's nomination. Now, two members of the progressive group known as "The Squad" have lost their re-election bids.This week, Brittany sits down with one of them, former congressional representative, Cori Bush of Missouri. They get into what the progressive politics are in 2025 and what the future holds for Democrats and identity politics. Support public media and receive ad-free listening & bonus content by joining NPR+ today.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
Full Episode
Hello, hello. I'm Brittany Luce, and you're listening to It's Been a Minute from NPR, a show about what's going on in culture and why it doesn't happen by accident. Hello, Representative Bush. Hi, Brittany. How are you?
Good. It's good to talk to you again. How are you doing? I'm great. I'm great. You know, all things considered. Yeah. Yeah.
This is Cori Bush. And up until last Friday, she was a Democratic congresswoman representing St. Louis, Missouri. But today, she's back to being activist Cori Bush, organizer Cori Bush, private citizen Cori Bush. That's because last Friday, a new Congress began. And last summer, she lost her bid for re-election. And yeah, I know, the losers rarely get to write history.
But in this case, I think this loser and her story are a perfect case study for understanding why Democrats, and by extension, progressives, lost the House, the Senate, and the White House. Let's go back a few months to last August.
The dust is settling after one of the toughest races we've seen in the state, perhaps in the country. This big primary, a lot of outside money coming into the St. Louis area to help Wesley Bell unseat Cori Bush. It's Tuesday, August 6th. Primary results are rolling in and the reality is setting in for Bush's reelection team.
I had just gotten dressed because I changed clothes from being out, you know, at the polls all day. And I just walked in the room and the team was just kind of frantically looking at their phones, just looking really somber.
And that's how I found out. It was clear that she was going to lose the race to her opponent, Democrat Wesley Bell. The primary between Cori Bush and Bell was the second most expensive primary in the history of this country, with close to $9 million of Super PAC money being spent on attack ads against Bush.
It was shocking because I did not expect the disinformation, the lies and the misinformation, the racism that came into play in my election to actually work.
A majority of that money came from the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee, better known as AIPAC. Bush vocally pushed for a ceasefire in Gaza during her time in office. And during her primary, AIPAC's funds were used to make political attack ads that used distorted images of Bush, like a bigger forehead and elongated features, that she called out as racist.
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